Image:The Tribute Money.jpg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Image
• File history
• File links

Size of this preview: 800 × 572 pixels
Full resolution‎ (900 × 643 pixels, file size: 146 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

[edit] Summary

The Tribute Money was painted in 1817 when the painter was in his twenty-fifth year, studying in Rome. From 1816 to 1818 the artist was studying in Rome, where he was elected to the Academy of St Luke. The strong influence of Guercino discernible in this painting was clearly felt by the painter during this formative period. The Prophet Ezra (Lennox Collection, Downton Castle) dated to 1815, at the very beginning of his Italian apprenticeship, also recalls Guercino explicitly in its style and subject, and it is clear that early in his career Hayter was impressed by the expressive possibilities of the Baroque manner. The figures in the present painting display the dynamic physique and pictorial rhetoric of the style that conveyed its message by an assault upon the viewer’s visual sense. The interplay of gesture and glance between the group conveys unspoken the sense of the narrative that it illustrates. The story would have been familiar to an early nineteenth century audience and remains recognisable to a modern age less conversant with scripture. Other artists when illustrating this episode of Christ’s teaching frequently chose to show Christ responding to the Pharisee who tried to trick him by asking whether the devout Jew was obliged to pay taxes to Rome. Either of two answers, yes or no, would have been damaging, the former would have established Christ as a cipher before the Roman state and the latter as a dangerous rebel. His well-known response ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s’ (Matthew 22:21) trod effortlessly between the twin perils making him obnoxious neither to the authorities nor to his followers. Hayter illustrates the succeeding verse 27, in which Christ instructs Peter ‘Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast a hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.’ In place of the Pharisee who appears, for example, in Titian’s treatment of the earlier episode, there is a company of Christ’s disciples, and a single figure of a Roman soldier to represent the monolith of Roman government to whom the tax is payable. Hayter has chosen, therefore, to show the instance of a miracle, the extraction of the coin from the fish’s mouth, which provides an opportunity to show various stages of astonishment in the faces of his subjects. Christ alone is impassive and didactic, as he looks reassuringly to the apostle in the left foreground, gesturing with amazement at the coin. This, from the colour of his cloak, is most probably Peter’s brother Andrew. Peter stands, of course, at the right producing both the fish and the coin, whilst the Roman soldier displays an expression of pure disbelief and looks, almost stunned, towards Peter who has just extracted the coin. A further disciple expresses his awe with a lowered head and gesture of wonder at the miracle he has just witnessed. In these various characterisations, Hayter has made plain the degree of faith than each man had in Christ previous to the event by the gradation from the Roman soldier’s open-mouthed incredulity to the faithful impassivity of Peter.

[edit] Licensing

The two-dimensional work of art depicted in this image is in the public domain in the United States and in those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years. Under American copyright law, originality of expression is necessary for copyright protection, and a mere photograph of an out-of-copyright work may not be protected under American copyright law.

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

• Search for duplicate files
• Edit this file using an external application

  See the setup instructions for more information.

File links