A history painter, Bloemaert applied landscape in its traditional role as a backdrop for biblical narratives of journeys, here of the Tobias and the Angel from the Apocryphal book of Tobit. An imaginative concoction in his mannerist style, it nonetheless features local and contemporary rural architecture, similar to that in the drawings of his Haarlem counterpart Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1616/17).