Tobias Healing His Father's Blindness
c. 1640–45
Rembrandt van Rijn
Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669)
Drawings
Tobias Healing His Father's Blindness, c. 1640–45. Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669). Pen and brown ink, touched with white gouache; framing lines in pen and brown ink; sheet: 21.1 x 17.7 cm (8 5/16 x 6 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1969.69 This drawing is a prime example of the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn's innovative approach to biblical narrative, in which he often humanized traditional pictorial formulas through the inclusion of observed details from everyday life. It depicts the climactic moment of the Book of Tobit, an apocryphal book of the Old Testament, in which, instructed by the archangel Raphael, Tobias heals his father Tobit's blindness by rubbing his eyes with fish gall. With spontaneity, a deft hand, and deceptive simplicity in his mark-making, Rembrandt depicts an intimate family scene including the archangel, Tobias, Hannah, and Sarah around a seated Tobit. Hannah’s spectacles, a unique detail among images of the scene created by Rembrandt and his circle, further thematizes sight. Rembrandt’s most innovative addition to the story centers on Tobias, who concentrates intensely to use a scalpel, rather than fish gall, to perform a cataract operation on his father’s left eye. Cataract surgery was a new procedure pioneered in Amsterdam in 1635 by Dr. Job Janszoon van Meekren, and Rembrandt may have witnessed the doctor perform it. The seated figure in this drawing is receiving cataract surgery on his left eye, a procedure pioneered in Amsterdam in 1635 by Dr. Job Janszoon van Meekren.
- Maker/Artist
- Rembrandt van Rijn
- Classification
- Drawing
- Formatted Medium
- Pen and brown ink, touched with white gouache; framing lines in pen and brown ink
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 21.1 x 17.7 cm (8 5/16 x 6 15/16 in.)
- Inscribed
- Inscription: verso, upper center, in graphite: -13 [crossed out]; upper right, in black chalk: rembrant; upper right, in brown ink: D; upper center, in brown ink: [15-50?] / Tobias; upper left, in brown ink: 9 [sideways]; lower left, in brown ink: [illegible, cropped]; lower left, in brown ink: No 2910; lower left, in brown ink: Rembrandt; lower right, in brown ink: -d[l?]-13 [upside down]
- Departments
- Drawings
- Accession Number
- 1969.69
- Credit Line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Exhibitions
- Year in Review: 1969, Dutch Art and Life in the Seventeenth Century, Seventeenth Century Dutch Drawings from American Collections, Seventeenth Century Netherlandish Graphics, National Schools of Style, Netherlandish Drawings from the Permanent Collection, Rembrandt: The Master and His Workshop, Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art, Rembrandt's Journey: Painter, Draftsman, Etcher, Rembrandt Paintings in America, Treasures on Paper from the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, <em>Catalogue descriptive des dessins de maitres anciens expoose a l’ecole des beaux-arts. </em>L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1879., <em>Exposition d’oevures de Rembrandt, dessins et gravures. </em>Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, 1908.
- Rights Statement
- CC0
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