A drawing attributed to Adam Elsheimer in the Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid

Abstract

A pen-and-ink and chalk drawing depicting Tobias and the angel is clearly related to Adam Elsheimer’s so-called ‘Small Tobias’, one of three paintings of the subject he is known to have made when in Rome in 1600–10. It is here proposed that the drawing is a preparatory sketch by Elsheimer for a lost fourth treatment of the story, recorded in a mezzotint made in London c.1685.