St. Raphael the Archangel

Wood, polychrome
Chapel of St. Anne, Burgos Cathedral, Spain

In the Book of Tobit the archangel Raphael guides Tobias in his travels, so he is often pictured as a traveler with a walking staff. But in this statue, his traveling has been interpreted as pilgrimage and he wears the attributes of a pilgrim going to Santiago de Compostela: a leather mantle and broad hat festooned with scallops. His left hand holds an attribute often seen in his portraits, the fish with whose gall Tobias will cure his father's blindness.

Read more about St. Raphael.

Photographed at the cathedral by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.