Tobias Healing His Father's Blindness

"Tobias Healing His Father's Blindness" is a profound drawing created by Rembrandt van Rijn between 1640 and 1645. This composition, executed in pen and brown ink and subtly touched with white gouache highlights, exemplifies the artist's masterful draftsmanship during his middle period. The drawing's subject, drawn from the Apocryphal Book of Tobit, captures the intense, climactic moment when the young Tobias restores his blind father Tobit's sight using fish gall, a required action for the miracle promised by the Archangel Raphael. The framing lines, also rendered in pen and brown ink, serve to define the intimate domestic setting and focus the viewer exclusively on the emotional core of the scene.

As a preeminent master of the Netherlands' Golden Age, Rijn often returned to biblical narratives, favoring their dramatic tension and inherent human emotion. The psychological intensity evident in this work is typical of Rijn’s output during the 1640s, contrasting the father's vulnerability with the protective actions of the son and the astonished reactions of the witnesses gathered around the bed. Drawings of this classification were essential independent works circulated among collectors. While this unique piece remains held in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Rijn's extensive body of work ensures that high-quality prints and reproductions of many of his biblical scenes are widely available through various collections, often entering the public domain.