The Cult and Representation of the Archangel Raphael in
Psalm 91:11 Today the concept of the guardian angel tends to be thought of as an ‘old’ idea, but there is little indication that the belief achieved any widespread liturgical or artistic attention before around 1600. However, the largely forgotten cult of the Archangel Raphael, to which the concept of the guardian angel is closely linked, predates it by some length. This article considers how popular devotion to one specific angel developed into a more general belief in angelic intervention, through an examination of the iconography associated with the Archangel Raphael in sixteenth-century Venice. The understanding and representation of the role of guardian angels is examined, and I show how the imagery developed from the iconography of Raphael and his relationship with his attribute Tobias. In addition, I examine how the effect of Protestant criticism of the cult of saints — of angels in particular — and the efficacy of prayer affected the cult of Raphael and the saint’s representation in Venice. The Archangel Raphael is mentioned by name only in the deutrocanonical book of Tobit. 1 There he is described as being disguised as a human and accompanies the young Tobias and his dog on a journey to reclaim some borrowed money for Tobit, Tobias’ father, who is old, blind and poor. Along the way they catch a monstrous fish and then use its heart and liver to banish a demon from Sarah, who is then given in matrimony to Tobias. Upon their return home, Raphael uses the fish’s gall to cure Tobit of blindness, before disappearing. In the early twentieth century a number of articles addressed the latefifteenth-century tradition of images featuring Raphael and Tobias in Florence. Gombrich reevaluated images such as Tobias and the Angel (c. 1470-75) by Andrea Verrocchio’s workshop. This painting, and others like it produced around the same time, had previously been understood as a votive picture intended to ensure the safe return of merchants’ sons who were venturing out on their maiden voyages. The narrative incongruities of these images meant that they came under criticism because they seemed ill designed as illustrations of the story of Tobias and the Angel. The monstrous fish is frequently represented as a perfectly normal size and still intact, despite the box carried by Raphael which contains its entrails: meanwhile, the angel supposedly disguised as a human is always shown displaying his wings and is in one example even accompanied by the other archangels. Gombrich demonstrated that