The Archangel Raphael with Saints James the Great and Nicholas

Cima came from Conegliano, a hill town on the mainland north of Venice, and he never really left it behind. He spent his career painting for Venetian churches, but the backgrounds keep returning to the same soft green hills he grew up among. This panel, made around 1514 for a Venetian church, shows the archangel Raphael leading the young Tobias on his journey. Tobias carries the fish whose organs would cure his father's blindness, and a small dog trots along at their feet. Behind the two saints who flank them stretches that familiar countryside. It is a story from scripture set down, quite deliberately, in the land Cima could see from home.