Week Three

In “The Tribute Money,” the artist Masaccio’s intent was to portray a realistic narrative that glorified St. Peter.

The piece’s height is a little over 8 feet, so the figures portrayed are around life-size. The artist used both linear perspective and atmospheric perspective in his scenery. The building’s angles on the right lead to a vanishing point and the scenery dulls in colors and details as it seems to be farther away. The figures overlap each other and get smaller or larger depending on how close to the viewer they’re meant to be seen as. The artist was very interested in convincing the viewer of a real space. Also a light source is clearly defined, as are the folds in the drapery and clothing and the toes and muscles that are visible. The halos, of course, are an obvious attempt to try something new that would make spatial relationships more believable. Earlier halos were flat circles behind a figures head no matter what, and even if the rest of the painting seemed to be illusionist, the flat disk of a halo would give an annoying sense of two dimensionality. Masaccio’s halos recede into space and are affected by the position of the head they adorn. They still aren’t something we find in real life, but they are easier to associate with something real, like a hat.

The figures are depicted with facial expressions, a lot of them confused or concerned like the central Peter is. Peter’s forehead is rankled, his eyebrows raised in question, and his left hand reaches for Jesus tilted in a questioning manner. This figure is convincingly a human being, knowing he should do as Jesus says but is unsure of the methods involved. Peter’s figure shows the most emotion and has some of the greatest contrasts with highlights and shadows. He is apparently very important.

The figures’ poses show not only what it is that they are saying (the tax collector demanding payment if they want to continue on; Jesus directing Peter to the water; Peter clearly unsure if going over there makes any sense), but they lead the viewer through the story. Even with his back to me, the foremost figure speaks to me first, then guides my eye with his arm to Jesus who leads me to Peter as they point to the next scene on the left. Though I want to identify the leftmost side of a narrative as the beginning, the middle area grabs my attention first because that is where most of the bright colors, interesting faces, and busyness occur along with having figures that appear closer. Then the central figures send the viewer to the left. After admiring the solitary figure fishing, I am drawn back to the middle, where the tax collector points me to the right scene and I can finally appreciate Peter paying off the tax man.

The final scene seems to me to be the most important.  The figures appear to be the closest, the details are the crispest, and the colors are the sharpest. That could all be dependent on what photograph I’m looking at, but I’m going to assume it’s because Masaccio was trying to put this final Peter in the best light. The miracle of finding money in a fish’s mouth is downsized. That scene is dully colored and placed at a distance. Peter’s handling the situation is what is important.

The scene arrangement is a cleaver way to get around placing fishable waters in the middle of the paint and breaking up the scenes into a typical left to right narrative.  Life doesn’t always happen in a left to right way. In reality, Peter wouldn’t have gone 1) from the group to 2) the water to 3) the tax collector, left to right – he would have had to go through Jesus and the disciples standing around waiting for him, just like the viewer does. The scene placement is more concerned with the realistic spaces than the chronological organization. The story is not told in a direct, linear way, but shows realistic locations of scenes. Going from left to right in the typical manner would have sacrificed the realism Masaccio was striving for. He used other means to describe the story without losing any accuracy.