Tobie et Anne

The story comes from the Book of Tobit, in the Apocrypha: old Tobit, blinded years earlier when sparrow droppings fell into his eyes, sits by the hearth while his wife Anna spins wool, the two of them waiting in dread for a son who has not come home. Rembrandt paints them poor and old, the whole mood carried by a dim, warm light. There is a hidden layer here as well. Beneath the figures, examination has found an earlier still life the panel once held, two fish on a platter, a lit candle, two glasses, all painted out and turned into this quiet domestic scene. Scholars have argued back and forth over the attribution, but Rotterdam's museum counts it as a Rembrandt of 1659.