In the apocryphal Book of Tobit is the story of Tobias, who was accompanied by the angel Raphael on the famous journey which he took to recover his father’s money, a journey in which he not only caught the fish whose gall was to cure his father’s blindness, but also found a wife. It is the only subject from the Apocrypha which now decorates Christian churches, and owes this grace to the force with which the story, despite its fantastic details, illustrates the constant watchfulness of Heaven over those still on their earthly pilgrimage. In the fifteenth century it was a favourite subject for a votive picture on behalf of one about to take a journey. The young man, rather helpless in his youth and inexperience, protected by the strong, wise guardian angel, was a group painted with the greatest pleasure, and the fascination of ideal, sexless beauty, of curved, sweeping wings, tempted to an amplification of the subject, and though the Book of Tobit mentions one archangel only-- ‘... The affable archangel Raphael; the sociable spirit that deign’d To travel with Tobias, and secured His marriage with the seven-times wedded maid--’[232] there suddenly sprang up in Florence a short-lived fashion for depicting Tobias with three archangels. There are two of these pictures in Florence;[233] others at Verona,[234] Turin[235] and Munich.[236] In each Michael is armed, Raphael grasps Tobias by the hand, and Gabriel carries a branch of lilies. But the four figures in a row make an awkward composition, and stiffness is avoided at the expense of dignity. A mincing angel, too conscious of his pretty wings and daintily-held lily, is the Gabriel of the best known of these pictures, attributed of late years to Botticini. [Illustration: _Jörg Brue_ THE COLUMBINE OF THE SEVEN GIFTS (Berlin)] [Illustration: _The Master of Flémalle_ _Photo Hanfstängl_ SAINT BARBARA WITH THE ROYAL LILY (Prado)] The lily is, of course, here used non-symbolically, merely to distinguish one archangel from another, and for the same reason that Michael is given the sword and frequently the scales for the weighing of souls, Raphael the traveller’s staff and gourd, or, when with Tobias, a small box. The angel Gabriel’s primary function is to be the herald of God, as it is Michael’s to lead the hosts of Heaven, and Raphael’s to guide the straying. Therefore Gabriel carries the herald’s wand, now developed to a lily, Michael the sword, and Raphael the staff. Thus Gabriel, when in company with other archangels and angels, carries the lily to establish his identity, but where, as in a Coronation[237] or an Enthroned Madonna, he stands with Saint Michael guarding the throne, he usually holds also a scroll with ‘AVE MARIA’ upon it, showing that the main function of the lily is to proclaim the spotlessness of the Virgin.