Le Denier de César

Rubens had not long been back in Antwerp from eight years in Italy when he painted this, around 1612, and the crowded, muscular figures show how much he had absorbed from Caravaggio and the Venetians. The subject is a trap. Religious elders press in on Christ, trying to make him say something punishable, asking whether Jews should pay taxes to their Roman occupiers. He holds up a coin stamped with the emperor's face and tells them to give Caesar what is Caesar's and God what is God's. Rubens splits the panel by light, keeping the scheming faces in the bright half and Christ himself in shadow. The painting has hung in San Francisco since 1944, at what is now the Legion of Honor.