The archangel the title will not name

The travelling companion in the Book of Tobit is Raphael, and the story turns on the fact that nobody in it knows so until the end. Titles inherit that reticence. Seven entries in this catalogue record the Tobit story; three name Raphael outright, and four, including this one, call him only "the Angel". The difference is not carelessness. Naming him states the ending; withholding the name keeps the reader inside the journey, where a boy has a guide and no idea what the guide is.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1857 and gives Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, a French painter, with the style term Romanticism. The measured colour family is ochre. The recorded location is the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. No dimensions are recorded for this entry, so none are given here. The subject fields file the work under landscape, rural and river, and not under religion.

Rank on the road

Raphael is one of three archangels the tradition names, and his office is escort: he accompanies a person for the length of a journey and then leaves. That is the least ceremonial job in the hierarchy and the most narrative, which is why it produced a story long enough to paint repeatedly. Sixteen titles here name an archangel. This is not one of them, and the archangel is present all the same.