The Tribute Money

A tax collector at Capernaum demands the temple tribute, and Christ tells Peter he will find the coin to pay it in the mouth of a fish (Matthew 17:24-27). Masaccio tells all three moments in one frame: the demand at center, Peter pulling the coin from the fish at the far left, and Peter paying the collector at the right. The apostles stand as a ring of solid, weighty figures, lit from a single source and set before real, atmospheric mountains. Frescoed in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence beside his Expulsion, it is a founding monument of Renaissance painting, fusing Giotto's gravity with the new science of perspective.