This oil on canvas illustrates the biblical episode from the Book of Tobit, depicting the climactic moment of miraculous healing.
The composition organizes three figures around the patriarch Tobit. His son Tobias applies fish gall to his father’s eyes, while the angel Raphael, recognizable by his outstretched wings, reveals his divine nature.
Strozzi displays his Genoese colorist mastery here: brilliant reds of the garments contrast with muted greens and pearlescent whites. Theatrical lighting sculpts the volumes and accentuates the dramatic intensity. The free brushwork and impasto reveal Rubens’ influence on the artist. This work perfectly synthesizes Counter-Reformation art: edifying narrative, religious emotion, and pictorial virtuosity unite to move the faithful and glorify divine Providence.
Further informations
- The Healing of Tobit, c. 1625, by Bernardo Strozzi
- 42.7 x 65.5 cm (16 13/16 x 25 13/16 in.)
- The Cleveland Museum of Art, not on view
- https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1993.5
Nicknamed “Il Cappuccino” due to his membership in the Capuchin order, Bernardo Strozzi (1581-1644) remains one of the major figures of the 17th-century Genoese School. Trained in the local Mannerist tradition, he quickly emancipated himself from his masters to develop a personal style combining the Venetian heritage of Veronese with the Flemish influence of Rubens. After leaving religious orders around 1610, he established himself as a painter and developed an aristocratic and bourgeois clientele. Forced to flee Genoa in 1630 to escape prosecution by his former order, he settled permanently in Venice where he completed his career. His work, oscillating between religious subjects and genre scenes, is characterized by a rich palette, free brushwork, and dramatic expressiveness that would lastingly influence Italian Baroque painting.
The Book of Tobit and Healing Through Faith
The Healing of Tobit illustrates one of the most tender episodes in the deuterocanonical books of the Bible. Tobit, blinded eight years earlier by bird droppings that fell on his eyes, is cured by his son Tobias on the advice of a mysterious travelling companion, the angel Raphael in disguise. During a journey together on the Tigris, Tobias caught a fish at Raphael’s instruction and preserved its gall; on his return, he applies this gall to his father’s eyes and restores his sight. Strozzi concentrates the action on three figures in an almost domestically intimate setting: Tobias applies the remedy, Tobit turns his face upward in complete surrender, and the angel Raphael, recognisable by his spread wings, silently reveals his divine nature as he witnesses the miracle. The theatrical lighting carves the faces from a dark ground, intensifying the emotional charge of the moment.
Bernardo Strozzi: Painter-Monk Between Genoa and Venice
Bernardo Strozzi (Genoa, c. 1581 – Venice, 1644), nicknamed “Il Cappuccino” for his Capuchin affiliation and “Il Prete genovese” after his departure from religious life, represents one of the most individual syntheses in early seventeenth-century Italian painting. Leaving his order around 1610, he built a substantial aristocratic clientele in Genoa, developing a style that fused the rich Venetian colouring inherited from Veronese with the broad, vibrant brushwork that Rubens had introduced to northern Italy during his Genoese visits of 1607-1608. Compelled to flee Genoa in 1630 following a dispute with the Church over his wish to keep his elderly mother in his care, he settled permanently in Venice, where he spent the final fourteen years of his life. In his mature Venetian phase, of which The Healing of Tobit at Cleveland is an accomplished earlier example, the expressivity of the paint surface, reds and pearlescent whites against muted greens, serves both the devotional content and the pleasure of pure painterly touch.
A Subject for the Counter-Reformation
The story of Tobit was particularly prized in Counter-Reformation religious culture for its demonstration that faith, prayer, and charitable works, Tobit was renowned for burying the dead at personal risk, bring divine reward. Strozzi, who maintained his faith throughout the turbulent disruptions of his religious life, returned repeatedly to subjects from the deuterocanonical books that embodied this message of providential care and miraculous restoration.
