Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). View source
The Tribute Money
Masaccio · Renaissance & Mannerism
- Artist
- Masaccio (Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone) (1401–1428)
- Date
- c. 1425
- Dimensions
- 255 x 598 cm
- Medium
- Fresco
- Location
- Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy
The Tribute Money, in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence, tells the Gospel story in which a tax collector demands payment from Jesus and his apostles. Jesus tells Peter to catch a fish, in whose mouth he will find a coin to pay the tax.
A closer look
Masaccio shows three moments in one picture. In the centre, the tax collector, seen from behind, confronts Christ, who calmly points to the lake, and Peter repeats the gesture. On the left, Peter kneels at the water's edge pulling the coin from a fish's mouth; on the right, he hands it over. The apostles stand like solid, sculptural figures in heavy robes, casting real shadows in a single light that matches the chapel's window. The landscape of bare mountains recedes in aerial perspective, one of the first convincing landscapes of the Renaissance.
