The Blindness of Tobit: The Large Plate
Medium
etching and drypoint
Dimensions
sheet: 16.3 × 13.2 cm · platemark: 15.8 × 12.9 cm
Classification
Department
Prints
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
Accession Number
2002.10
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
About this artwork
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 firel...