Tobias and the Angel

Filippino Lippi

National Gallery of Art

A winged angel leads a clean-shaven young man across a landscape in this vertical painting. The angel and man nearly fill the composition. They both have pale skin slightly tinged with green, rosy cheeks, copper-blond curly hair, fluttering robes, and halos. Their jaws are rounded, and their full lips closed. They each step forward onto one foot. To our left, the angel’s head turns back with eyes downcast or closed. The angel’s sky-blue robe is gathered up around the waist and falls to the ankles. The neckline and bottom hem are edged with gold writing, and the halo is a gold ring filled in with gold dots. The angel holds a gold vessel or object in the right hand, farther from us, and reaches the other arm slightly back. The man, Tobias, leans forward and reaches one arm to hook wrists with the angel. A scroll curls down from Tobias’s wrist. He tips his head to our left and looks up with large, light brown eyes. He wears a rose-pink robe over a powder-blue tunic. The robe also has gold lettering around the lower hem, and he wears matching pink stockings and shin-high, golden-yellow boots. He carries a fish hanging from a gold thread with his other hand. Gold rays radiate around his head like a starburst. A small, shaggy white dog looks at the ground to our left of the angel’s feet. Some forest-green shrubs and spindly trees with sage-green canopies grow on the far side of the path. Water winds into the distance to meet white buildings along the right edge of the composition. More trees and a steeple are hazy blue in the distance along the horizon, which comes about halfway up the painting. The sky is streaked with white and ice blue.