12. Hendrick Goudt (1585-1630)
after Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610)

Tobias with the Angel, Dragging the Fish (The Large Tobias)

(click on image to print)
Goudt, Tobias with the Angel

Tobias with the Angel, Dragging the Fish (The Large Tobias)

Engraving and etching, 1613, 258 x 268 mm., Dutuit 2, Hollstein 2 only state. Fine, rich and detailed impression on laid paper with the watermark of a large, crowned shield (details illegible), with margins outside the platemark all around and, aside from two flattened creases, almost invisible from the front, in perfect, fresh condition. The story of Tobias’ journey to find a cure for his father’s blindness, though from the Apocrypha, is one of the most moving tales in the Bible. The capture of the fish, whose gall cleared Tobit’s eyes, is central to the story, and in the angel who guides Tobias is the origin of the concept of the guardian angel. Goudt made only seven prints, all of them after paintings by Elsheimer, but they are among the great treasures of seventeenth-century etching and engraving.