Tobit and Anna with the Kid

The story comes from the Book of Tobit, in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. Old Tobit has gone blind, and his wife Anna keeps the household going by weaving for the neighbours. One day she is paid with a young goat. Hearing it bleat in the house, the blind man assumes she has stolen it and accuses her, and she turns on him for doubting her. Rembrandt was drawn to this small domestic quarrel for some 20 years. He had already painted it as a young man in 1626, and here he returns to it around 1645, an old couple caught in a single flare of suspicion, lit from one low source. The little panel is catalogued today as the work of Rembrandt and his workshop rather than his hand alone. Anna stands with the kid still in her arms, mid-word, while Tobit leans toward the sound he cannot see.