Tobias and the Angel by the Workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio

The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour

Every year, the National Gallery partners with organisations and audiences across the UK to ensure that everyone in Britain can engage with their national collection. The Masterpiece Tour 2021-2023 is a partnership between the National Gallery, Oriel Davies, Newtown, The Beacon Museum, Whitehaven, and Carmarthenshire County Museum, who work together to select and display a painting from the National Gallery in exhibitions which offer new ways for audiences across the UK to experience the painting.

Biographical

Andrea del Verrocchio (about 1435 – 1488) was one of the most innovative and versatile artists active in Florence in the second half of the 15th century, a period of great economic and cultural prosperity in the city. First trained as a goldsmith, he was not only a skilled sculptor who worked in a wide range of materials and techniques, but also won acclaim as a painter and draughtsman. Counting the powerful Medici family among his patrons, his works of art were in high demand in and beyond Florence. 

Verrocchio’s paintings reveal a keen interest in the art of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, the study of landscape and the subtle effects of light. A gifted teacher, the artist ran a large, prolific workshop and often worked collaboratively with his talented young pupils, including Leonardo da Vinci, Lorenzo di Credi and Pietro Perugino. Verrocchio’s spirit of inquiry and innovation had a seminal impact on the next generation of artists, who would instigate a period in art known today as the High Renaissance. As a Florentine poet wrote in the early 1500s, “whatever painters have that is good, they drank from Verrocchio’s spring”. 

The Painting

This painting shows the archangel Raphael guiding the young Tobias and his dog through the countryside, an episode based on the book of Tobit. Clad in lavish attire, the boy is on his way to collect a debt that is owed to his blind father, Tobit. He carries a gutted fish on a string, while Raphael shows him the small, round box that contains its organs – ingredients for a salve to cure Tobit’s blindness. 

This picture is exemplary of the collaborative nature of Verrocchio’s workshop. Its varying characteristics suggest that the master painted it with the help of several workshop assistants. Both the sculptural modelling of the figures’ delicate faces and the lavish detail of their garments are characteristic of Verrocchio himself, while the more economical execution of the landscape indicates another hand. It has been suggested that the lively dog and the fish – painted like a minute still life – may be the work of a young Leonardo da Vinci.

Tobias and the Angel in Renaissance Florence

Paintings of Tobias and the Angel enjoyed great popularity in Florence between about 1450 and 1485. This was likely due to the popular cult of the Archangel Raphael, which was promoted by several confraternities (religious brotherhoods) dedicated to him. As the patron saints of travellers and healers, Raphael was invoked to provide safe passage for merchants travelling on business, or young boys running errands for their fathers, like Tobit – as many young Florentine apprentices would have done.

Often similar in composition, such images of Tobias and the Angel were painted on altarpieces, votive offerings and small panels for personal devotion in a domestic setting. Verrocchio likely responded directly to a painting of the same subject by the Florentine artist Piero del Pollaiuolo (as shown on this panel), which was on view in the church of Orsanmichele in Florence. Instead of merely copying it, the artist sought to surpass it by painting more elegant, more lively figures and imbuing them with energetic movement, emphasised by their swirling draperies and laces. 

Fear and protection

A change was taking place across Europe during Verrocchio’s life.  Where religion, folklore, and magic had coexisted and were accepted as part of life during the Middle Ages, by the 15th century witches and supernatural forces were blamed and feared for bringing misfortune onto families, for causing sickness, and cursing people, animals and crops.

Many of those accused of witchcraft were folk healers and ale brewers, people who provided a valuable health service in their community. Some historians now believe there was a link between the growing availability of formal medical training and the accusations of witchcraft levelled against folk healers.

Openings in a house were potent places for the entry of evil.  It was commonplace to use hidden objects, protective charms, and witch marks (a type of ancient boundary spell shown as a wheel or spiral) to draw witches away, distract, or trap them.  A huge number of charms, including shoes, nails, horseshoes, and old flat irons are found near doorways and chimneys in older Welsh buildings.

Trees and plants also gave protection.  Black Bryony (Meipen Fair) was used to destroy evil charms and the vibrant red of the Mountain Ash (Rowan) offered the best protection against magic.  It was often planted to protect a house, or carried, attached to a horse’s harness or placed around doors and windows.

Care and healing

Tobias’ cure of his father’s blindness by ointment made from fish guts may seem strange but, historically, medicine, care, and surgery were offered in many ways.  In rural areas, a healing wise-woman expert in the use of medicinal herbs and midwifery with knowledge passed down generations had highly valued skills.  There were dentists and barber-surgeons, and religious orders who provided care for the terminally ill.  And there were doctors too, who usually treated the wealthy. 

Possibly the most famous Welsh doctors were the Physicians of Myddfai in Carmarthenshire, representing a dynasty stretching back to Rhiwallon and his sons who served in the court of Rhys Grug, Prince of Deheubarth, in the 13th century.  Rhiwallon was eldest son of the Lady of the Lake of Llyn y Fan Fach.  In the Welsh legend, Nelferch emerged from the lake, married a farmer and had three sons, but was forced to return to her magical world. She visited the human world only to teach her sons about the medicinal properties of plants and encourage them to be healers.

The Physicians of Myddfai are believed to have maintained the family profession for over 800 years. Their remedies were written down in Welsh and later transcribed into the manuscript known as The Red Book of Hergest in around 1400.  Interestingly, the Physicians not only treated symptoms but looked for the cause and an estimate of the outcome of treatment. In this they may be called early holistic doctors by recommending such actions as patients eating healthily and taking exercise.