The Blindness of Tobit: the larger Plate

The Blindness of Tobit: Larger Plate, offered here in a particularly fine, tonal impression, is Rembrandt’s second etched version of this scene. Rembrandt depicted scenes from the apocryphal Book of Tobit on a number of occasions, including several paintings, drawings and the etching The Angel departing from the Family of Tobias (B. 43; New Holl. 189), suggesting that he felt a deep affinity to the story. Tobit, a devout Jewish man living in Nineveh during the Assyrian exile, had all his possessions confiscated by King Sennacherib as a punishment for providing burials for executed Jews. Reduced to poverty, his misfortunes persisted with the loss of his sight. Many years later his son Tobias returns from a long journey accompanied by the Archangel Raphael, who has instructed him to anoint his father's eyes with fish gall, so that he shall see again. Rembrandt’s etching shows the moment before the miraculous healing, as the blind Tobit hears of his son’s return. He stands up, knocks over his wife’s spinning wheel in his eagerness, and hurries to the door. He is greeted by Tobias's dog, who has run ahead of his master and gambles at Tobit’s feet. Rembrandt’s moving depiction of the old man’s helplessness was perhaps informed by the personal experience of his own father losing his sight in old age. Although the light in the room emanates from the hearth behind him, Tobit's face is brightly lit, ‘suggesting that the old man is about it be illuminated both literally by the daylight that awaits outside the house, and metaphorically, as he moves toward enlightenment’ (Rosenberg, 2017, p. 140).