Динарий кесаря

The Pharisees try to trap Jesus with a coin, asking whether it is lawful to pay the emperor's tax, and he answers by turning the coin back on them, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Titian painted the moment around 1516 for a very particular spot, the door of a cabinet where Duke Alfonso of Ferrara kept his collection of coins and medals. The subject was almost a private joke aimed at the duke. Alfonso's lands lay partly under the emperor and partly under the pope, and he had lately been excommunicated and stripped of territory, so a picture about what one owes to worldly power and what to God cut close. It is the earliest work Titian signed, his name tucked on the tax collector's collar, a young painter announcing himself at a foreign court. That commission won him Alfonso's patronage for years.