Saints Raphael and Tobias: Roundel above Right Panel

In this small, circular painting - a roundel - a young boy holds a fish in one hand while the other clasps the hand of an angel. This is the story of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael. Tobias was sent by his blind father to a distant land to collect a debt, but on his way met Raphael, disguised as a man, who offered to guide him. Tobias stopped on the first night by the river Tigris, and was bathing his feet in the river when a monstrous fish surfaced and tried to eat him. He managed to haul it out onto dry land, and the angel advised him to keep its internal organs as a cure for his father's blindness.

The roundel comes from a large polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted in the 1420s by the Florentine artist Giovanni dal Ponte. It originally sat on the high altar of the church of the Camaldolese nunnery of San Giovanni Evangelista at Pratovecchio in Tuscany. Several panels from this altarpiece are now in our collection.

Small figures in medieval altarpieces often reflected local concerns. Tobias and the angel was a popular subject in fifteenth-century Florence, where there was a confraternity dedicated to Raphael - Tobias and the Angel was painted there by Verrocchio's workshop later in the century.

Credit: Bought, 1857