The Brancaccio: The Tribute Money By Masolino

Masaccio – The Tribute Money Around 1425, during the Renaissance Art Movement, The Brancacci family commissioned artist Masolino to do a series of paintings, with depictions of the story of the life of Saint Peter, that would adorn the walls of the family’s chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, in Florence. Among the contributions of works is The Tribute Money by Masaccio, Masolino’s young assistant, which is to be considered as a masterpiece of naturalistic impression, (depicting objects realistically in a natural setting) and a vital part of the development of renaissance art. (Sayre, 2016) The series of paintings were all fresco paintings, a method dating back to early Egypt, where watercolor is painted onto wet plaster, which
allows the color to penetrate the plaster and become fixed to the wall when it dries. Masaccio’s choices of color, the use of three-dimensional characters in three settings, and his use of the linear perspective and chiaroscuro techniques in The Tribute Money was a revelation in
The Tribute Money shows a well-known scene from the Gospel of Matthew, where Christ and his disciples are asked for money from the tax collector to pay the temple tax.
Christ then directs St. Peter to fetch coins out of the mouth of the first fish that he catches, then to pay the tax collector. To show the three different scenes within the same painting, Masaccio used an old narrative format, called continuous narrative, that he discovered in Rome while studying classicism, a format that dates to the Dark Ages. (Zucker & Harris, 2017) The scene begins in the center, and shows Christ surrounded in a half circle by twelve disciples, including St. Peter, all looking worried and anxious about the request of money from the tax collector. Christ, looking calm with the impatient tax collector standing in front of him, points to the river on the left side of the painting. There you see the second scene, where St. Peter is collecting the money from the fish’s mouth. Finally, on the right side of the painting, St. Peter is giving the money to the tax
collector.
In The Tribute Money, “the gestures and expressions help to tell the story,” (Zucker & Harris, 2017) and show the flow of the three scenes. The vanishing point that occurs just above Christ brings the initial focus straight to him in the center when you first look at the painting. You then notice Christ and St. Peter pointing to the left for the second scene, and on the right, St. Peter is handing the money to the tax collector on his right, in a gesture that almost looks like he’s pointing to signify that it is the third scene.
The original artist that was commissioned for the paintings of the chapel, Masolino, left very shortly after the works were started, leaving Masaccio to complete the frescos.
However, Masaccio left only a few years later, in 1427 or 1428, to join Masolino in Rome, leaving The Tribute Money unfinished. It wasn’t until the 1480s that the fresco was completed by artist another artist, Filippino Lippi, although the entirety of the fresco painting is considered to be Masaccio’s work only. Throughout the years, the fresco paintings in the chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine suffered quite a bit of damage, including a fire in the church in 1771, and in the 1980s entire chapel went through a major restoration. It was then discovered, during the cleaning and restoration, that all the characters in The Tribute Money had a gold-leaf halo, except for the tax collectors because they are thought to be non-Christian. The gold-leaf halo was meant to mark the characters as religious figures. The entirety of the St. Peters frescos, including The Tribute Money can still be found today in the fully restored Brancacci Chapel in
Florence.