Wedding Night of Tobias and Sarah

Sarah had been married seven times, and every husband had died on the wedding night, killed by the demon Asmodeus. That is how the Book of Tobit tells it. Young Tobias, guided by the archangel Raphael in disguise, married her anyway and did as the angel told him. He burned the heart and liver of a great fish caught on the journey, and the smoke drove the demon away.

Lastman shows that night. Tobias kneels at the brazier, Sarah watches anxiously from the bed, and overhead Raphael grapples with the demon. The panel is signed and dated 1611.

In Calvinist Amsterdam the Book of Tobit had an awkward standing. Protestants counted it among the Apocrypha, outside the true canon, and the official Dutch Bible of 1637 would print it set apart from the canonical books, behind a warning to readers. Painters and buyers loved the story all the same. Where this picture spent most of its life is unknown. The London dealer Margaret Drey, who sold it to the museum in 1962, had been told only that it came from a very good private collection, and her questions about whose went unanswered.