Three Angels and Young Tobias

Three Angels and Young Tobias (1485), in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin, depicts the apocryphal narrative of Tobit in which the Archangel Raphael accompanies the young Tobias on a quest to recover his father's money and heal his father's blindness. The Three Archangels — Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel — appear together in the Tobit-related tradition developed by Florentine painters of the period, serving as collective divine protectors of the young pilgrim. Lippi's version, with its graceful young figures and landscape setting, belongs to the devotional picture type produced for private Florentine households seeking supernatural protection for young men traveling on business.

Lippi groups the three angelic figures in close proximity around the young Tobias, creating an intimate cluster of standing forms united by similar drapery rhythms and elegant contrapposto stances. The landscape behind is sketched lightly, keeping attention on the foreground figures and their ritual identification of Raphael with his pilgrim's staff and the fish.