Tobias' Journey

Joos de Momper the Younger painted Tobias' Journey around 1620, depicting the biblical narrative from the Book of Tobit in which the young Tobias travels with the angel Raphael to recover his father's money. The subject was a popular vehicle for landscape painting: the journey structure gave compositional justification for the expansive, panoramic terrain that was de Momper's specialty, while the presence of the divine guardian within the natural world gave it moral and spiritual content. His treatment places the tiny figures of Tobias, the angel, and the faithful dog within a vast mountain landscape rendered in his characteristic palette of warm foreground browns giving way to cool atmospheric distance. The painting reflects the comfortable synthesis of sacred narrative and landscape painting that characterized Flemish art of this period.

The religious figures serve primarily as staffage within the sweeping panoramic landscape, where de Momper's atmospheric technique dissolves distant mountains into pale blue tones.