Cleveland Museum of Art

The Blindness of Tobit: The Large Plate

Rembrandt van Rijn

Date

1651

Medium

etching and drypoint

Culture

Netherlands

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Having sent Tobias to collect a debt, a blind Tobit knocks over his wife’s spinning wheel and gropes for the door in his excitement to see his long-absent son. Rembrandt selectively inked and wiped the plate of this beautiful impression to enhance the scene’s meaning. The dark ink left behind the figure accentuates Tobit’s isolation and makes his beard-the only area of the print without any ink-seem even brighter, dramatizing the father’s anguished expression. Tobit’s shadow is cast by the firelight onto the wall to the far left of the doorway, symbolizing how far he has strayed from his goal and the poignancy of his condition.

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