Raguel's Reception of Tobias at Ecbatana

Here depicted is the Old Testament story of Tobias at the House of Raguel. In the center foreground we see Raguel embracing the young Tobias, as he learns that this visitor is the son of his brother Tobit. Tobias’s guardian, the archangel Raphael, recognizable by his wings, is standing behind them, while Raguel’s wife Anna and daughter Sara, shown to the right, are overcome by emotion. Upon hearing the joyful news, Raguel commands a sheep to be killed – which is pictured to the left – in preparation of a festive dinner.

As is typical of the time, the artist incorporated various moments in the Old Testament story into the same image. Therefore, in the left background, we see Tobias and the Angel arriving at a lake, where Raphael subsequently encourages his companion to catch a fish that will help cure his father’s blindness. Finally, to the far right, Tobias is joined in matrimony to Raguel’s daughter Sarah.

The drawing is signed ‘L. Pier’ in the lower right corner – an abbreviation of Pieter Aertsen’s nickname ‘Lange Pier’, meaning Long Peter. The sixteenth-century Netherlandish artist is mostly known for his highly realistic paintings of still-lives and genre scenes. In contrast, his works with religious subject matter tend to show a more mannered style. The drawing depicted here is illustrative of Aertsen’s mannerism, apparent in the noticeably elongated features of the figures, their ovoid shaped heads, as well as the stylistic properties of the vessels seen in the lower right.

Only a handful of drawings by Aertsen have come down to us. Studying the corpus of circa twenty securely attributed sheets on basis of their draftsmanship and stylistic properties has enabled Wouter Kloek, former curator of paintings at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, to establish a tentative dating of the artist’s graphic oeuvre.

This corpus forms a point of reference in the process of dating the Museum’s previously unpublished drawing. Aertsen’s pen lines have a wavering, almost quivering quality. Volumes and shading are indicated by delicate grey washes, and very limited use is made of parallel hatching. These stylistic qualities are comparable to those in Aertsen’s Adoration of the Magi (formerly Calmann Galeries, London) dated by Kloek around 1550, and Saint Martin and the Beggar (Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, inv. no. 1949:32), dateable around 1554. The drawing of Tobias at the house of Raguel can therefore be situated around the beginning of the 1550s.[1]

Possibly this design it served as a preliminary sketch for a painting or tapestry. As of yet, no related artwork by Aertsen is known.

[1] Cf. W. Kloek, ‘De tekeningen van Pieter Aertsen en Joachim Beuckelaer’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, vol. 40 (1989), pp. 129-66. In style this sheet most strongly resembles Christ and his Disciples on their Way to Gethsemane, Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlungen (inv. no. 1980.2).