NG1221. Bought, 1886.
<p>Signed and dated on the wall-cupboard: A . DE . PAPE 165(8 or 9?)
</p><p>Tobit and Anna were the parents of Tobias who saved his father's sight with the help of the Archangel Raphael. Tobit had been reduced to poverty by God as a test: Anna supported them with her spinning wheel. Book of Tobit (2: 11 and 4: 21). If the identification of the subject as Tobit and Anna is correct, the spinning-wheel is presumably a reference to Anna working for money and the bare cupboard an allusion to their poverty. Because of the interior setting the painting was for a long time been interpreted as being a genre scene with an old couple. However, the subject was identified by comparison with a similar painting by Rembrandt ('Anna and the Blind Tobit'), also in the National Gallery's Collection.
</p><p>In 17th-century Holland, paintings were sometimes protected by curtains, and illusionistic representations of them, as in the curtain set in front of the scene on the right, are not uncommon.
</p><p>Oil on oak
</p>
40.7 × 56 cm.
<bdi><a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17361146" class="extiw" title="d:Q17361146"><span title="Dutch painter">Abraham de Pape</span></a>
</bdi>
circa 1658 <div style="display: none;">date QS:P571,+1658-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1480,Q5727902</div>
<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=ng1221">[1]</a>