Masaccio, The Tribute Money in the Brancacci Chapel Video Lecture - Humanities/Arts

DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: We're in
the Church of Santa Maria del
Carmine in a chapel
within the church, which
is called the Brancacci Chapel.
It is completely filled
with fresco and also
a tempera painting.
And on the left in
the upper register
is a painting by Masaccio.
Actually, two paintings.
One is The Expulsion from
the Eden, and to its right
is a much larger painting,
The Tribute Money.
DR. BETH HARRIS: And the chapel
is filled with people here
to see Masaccio's
great masterpiece.
Masaccio painted a few of the
scenes here of the life of St.
Peter, but the
rest of the chapel
was largely painted by one of
his contemporaries, Masolino.
But it's Masaccio who
we are here to see.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: So let's talk
about the Tribute Money first.
It's a pretty complicated
scene, but it's
a story from the
New Testament that
tells of Christ being confronted
by a tax collector who
works for Rome.
And the problem is that
Christ has renounced
all worldly possessions, he
doesn't have any money to pay.
DR. BETH HARRIS: Right,
Christ and the apostles
have no money to pay the tax
collector, who we see here
in the center in orange
with his back to us.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: And
with a short skirt,
unlike the other figures
which are more fully closed.
DR. BETH HARRIS: And Christ
and the apostles have halos,
and we can identify
the tax collector
because he doesn't have a halo.
And he's making gestures
demanding money.
The tax collector's standing
in the lovely contrapposto.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: And
some artist drawings
have suggested
that may have been
painted from a Roman sculpture.
DR. BETH HARRIS:
The contrapposto
could also have
come from Donatello.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Absolutely.
DR. BETH HARRIS: Christ directs
St. Peter to go get money
to pay the tax collector
from the Sea of Galilee
from the mouth of a fish.
So Christ performs a miracle.
The apostles will indeed be
able to pay the tax collector,
because the money will appear
in the mouth of the fish
that we see St. Peter
getting on the far left.
And then on the
far right, we see
St. Peter paying
the tax collector.
So we've got three
different moments of time.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
In the New Testament,
Christ says render unto Caesar
what is Caesar's, and render
unto God what is God's,
in a sense saying,
Caesar minted this money,
we can give it back to him,
it's not important.
What's important is the soul.
DR. BETH HARRIS: There's a
really specific Florentine
context for this.
The Florentine
government had just
initiated a new tax
called the Catasto, which
was an income tax.
I think this was seen,
by the Florentine,
as an idea that
Christ was condoning
that kind of civic
responsibility.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
I'm. really interested
in how complicated that story is
and yet have clearly Masaccio's
able to convey it.
Our eye goes not to the
left of scene first--
which presumably would
be where we would start,
we read from left to right--
but instead goes to Christ
in the center.
All of the apostles'
attention and tax collector's
attention is on Christ.
And so our eyes go
to Christ as well.
Christ points to Peter,
who in turn points almost
incredulously to
the Sea of Galilee.
DR. BETH HARRIS:
Right, you want me
to go to get the
money from where?
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: And
that of course moves
our eye left, over to
where we see Peter again.
We can recognize it's Peter
even though his face is
so foreshortened.
He's taken off the
red garb, presumably
not to get it dirty
or wet as he kneels.
DR. BETH HARRIS: You can
see him just opening up
the mouth of the fish.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: I
love it, it's so literal.
DR. BETH HARRIS:
It's very sweet.
Masaccio's also separating
that scene on the left
so we read it as
a separate scene,
because he's put St. Peter
way into the background.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: And
there really is background.
And it's been accomplished in
a number of different ways.
This is lovely,
atmosphere prospective
that allows us to move back
from mountain to mountain
as the sky gets lighter.
DR. BETH HARRIS:
Masaccio's created
a deep illusion of space here.
So the figures are really in a
very believable landscape, not
only the atmosphere perspective
but linear perspective
is employed on the right and
we can see the orthogonals
in the rather classical
looking building on the right.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
In fact, sometimes
I've suspected the only
reason that there's
a building in this
painting at all
is because Masaccio
is so interested
in linear perspective.
This is one of the
first surviving examples
of the employment of linear
perspective in a painting
that we have the Holy Trinity
just a year or so earlier.
Christ's head is
the vanishing point
in his use of
linear perspective.
So not only is all the attention
paid to Christ by his apostles,
but the very structure of the
painting brings our eye there.
DR. BETH HARRIS: So you look
at Christ, he looks very calm.
You follow his gesture
over to St. Peter,
and St. Peter looking
agitated and annoyed--
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: He does
look grumpy doesn't he?
DR. BETH HARRIS:
And in disbelief.
And then you see this
circular gathering
of the apostles
around them and you
start to register
their reaction.
Some of them looking, ooh,
what's going to happen next?
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Apprehensive.
DR. BETH HARRIS: Some of them
looking a little bit more calm.
But in all of that, Christ
remains central and calm
in this moment when
he performs a miracle.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It really
is a kind of conversation.
DR. BETH HARRIS: It's all this
gesturing to tell the story.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Really
activating the story,
absolutely.
I love also the contrast
between certain apostles.
For instance, you're
absolutely right.
Peter looks like
he's angry and is not
sure if he should actually be
protecting Christ from the tax
collector or not.
Where as John, next to
him with blond hair,
is such a passive face.
So, so calm.
I can't help but
think that Masaccio
put those faces
together in order
to achieve the
greatest contrast.
DR. BETH HARRIS: I think
there's no question.
I mean, Masaccio is thinking
about every possible way
he can make this
image seem real.
And I think that the space
to a 15th century viewer
looked incredibly realistic.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Use of
light and shadow really
picking up on
Masaccio's achievement
of the previous century,
but pushing it forward
dramatically.
To me I think the element that
adds the greatest realism are
those cast shadows
on the ground.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
Yes, they're amazing!
DR. BETH HARRIS:
They're so believable.
I mean you really get a
sense of these figures
standing in a landscape.
The light hitting them from the
right, which is, by the way,
the same direction as the
real light in the chapel.
There's a window
over to the right.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
Just over the altar.
DR. BETH HARRIS: If you
follow those shadows back,
if you look down
at the ground, they
give you an alternation
of light and dark
that helps establish a
foreground and background.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
I have to say,
I'm really taken with
representation of the feet.
We talked about the sense of
mass and volume in the figures.
But all these figures
seem so planted.
DR. BETH HARRIS: Well
I love their feet.
They're so grounded.
If you look, for example, at the
left foot of the tax collector,
you'll see that the left side
of his ankle is in shadow.
But the front part of his
left foot is in the sunlight.
So Masaccio takes such careful
attention to light and shadow.
And look at those
foreshortened halos
that Masaccio has employed
so that they're not
those flat, gold
circles that we see.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Well
they're foreshortened, just
like Peter's face on the
left of the painting.
DR. BETH HARRIS: Except a
halo isn't a real thing.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
So in a sense,
taking this symbol
of spirituality
and treating it as if it
was a solid in the world,
it is this funny moment
in the 15th century when
the symbolic traditions of
representation that have been
handed down from the
medieval are coming
into contact with a kind
of naturalistic facility
and an interest in naturalism.
And seek it as very
funny relationships.
DR. BETH HARRIS: Mhm.
So Masaccio really is giving us
a masterpiece of illusionism.
The illusion of space,
the illusion of volume.
To me the figures are
just fully human in a way
that I think about Donatello's
figures or [INAUDIBLE].
They have psychological depth.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: What is it
about the Florentine culture
that is allowing for this kind
of fully human expression?
This is one of the great
centers of humanism.
This looking back to
classicism and certainly we
see that in a number
of direct ways.
But more than that,
it's this ennobling
of the human
experience that I think
is so central to the license
that Masaccio is taking here.