The Archangel Raphael with Tobias

The story here comes from the Book of Tobit. Young Tobias sets out on a long journey, and the stranger walking with him is the archangel Raphael in disguise. On the way Tobias catches a fish, and the angel tells him to keep its gall, heart and liver. The gall will later cure his father's blindness. So the boy holds a gutted fish, and Raphael carries a small box for its precious organs. Perugino painted the panel around 1496 to 1500 for an altarpiece in the Carthusian monastery near Pavia. After the emperor Joseph II dissolved the monastery in 1782, the pictures went to Milan, were sold in 1786 to Count Giacomo Melzi, and were bought from his family for the National Gallery in 1856. At the very bottom edge peeps the head of the boy's dog, all that survived when the panel was trimmed in the 18th century.