Tribute to Caesar

When the Pharisees held out a coin and asked whether Jews should pay tax to Rome, the answer became one of the most quoted lines in the Gospels: give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Manfredi sets that trap among a knot of half-length figures leaning in over the coin, lit hard from one side so the faces nearest us jump forward out of the dark. He painted it around 1610 for the Medici, and it had a companion piece showing the boy Christ debating the elders in the Temple. By 1753 it had reached the Uffizi, and you can spot it hanging in the background of Johann Zoffany's famous view of the Tribuna, the crowded little room where the grand dukes kept their finest things for visitors to admire.