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Transcript

Purple: Direct representation of the source text. Blue: Partial representation of the source text, with some artistic deviation. Green: Complete artistic deviation from the source text.

Peter and the fish

Source text: 27 - “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”Representation in the fresco: In the painting, we can see Peter opening the mouth of the fish to encounter the "four-drachma" coin. Mosaccio did not include Peter taking out his line to catch the fish, which is likely because he wanted to keep the fresco in three separate parts. Adding more sequences to the painting would inhibit Mosaccio from spending more time on the techniques and detailing he utilized in the fresco. Since Mosaccio uniquely chose to display this story in sequences, it would have been challenging to incorporate more than three sequences in a digestible manner to viewers. Furthermore, the most important aspect of the story is Peter encountering the coin inside the mouth of a fish. Mosaccio most likely wanted to prioritize this portion of the text because it reflects the holiness of Christ: knowing Peter would find a coin inside the mouth of a fish in the lake.

Peter paying the tax collector

Source text: 27 - “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”Representation in the fresco: Mosaccio makes no artistic deviations in this portion of the fresco. Mosaccio displays Peter taking the coin and giving it to the tax collector on behalf of himself and Christ. Although the description in the Bible is very simple, we can see in the fresco that Peter is performing this task, just as Christ asked him to do, reflecting how Peter is a loyal follower of Christ.

Matthew 17:24-27

Source Text

24 - After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?” 25 - “Yes, he does,” he replied.When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?” 26 - “From others,” Peter answered.“Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him. 27 - “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”

From other Renaissance paintings, we know that when Peter is one of the central figures in an art piece, the artist was displaying a message about the Papacy, because Peter was the first pope. Perhaps, in this fresco, since Mosaccio was displaying the story of the tribute money, he wanted to convey a message about the financial power of the Papacy within Renaissance Italy. From my interpretation of the painting alongside the text, and considering that the fresco was displayed in a chapel, one can assume that Mosaccio was endorsing support for the Papacy through this painting. Perhaps Mosaccio also wanted his fresco to be a thought-provoking artwork.

The tribue money - mosaccio

Conclusion

Mosaccio might have imagined educated viewers visiting the chapel, discussing the meaning of Mosaccio's interpretation of the Biblical text, or how this fresco reflected the values of the Church. Furthermore, from contemplating the fresco, Mosaccio likely wanted viewers to be reminded of their religious dedication to Christianity, and also their financial commitment to their religion, by reminding viewers to give money to the Church and the Papacy. Considering this, I conclude that Mosaccio's artistic deviations from the text were likely stylistic choices because he was interested in preserving space to center the fresco on the three sequences which reflect Peter's commitment to pay the temple tax, reinforcing to the viewers the importance of financially supporting the Church.

Source text: When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?” 26 - “From others,” Peter answered. “Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him. 27 - “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”Representation in the fresco: Perhaps one of the strongest examples of Mosaccio applying creative liberties in his interpretation of the source text is his portrayal of the conversation between Peter and Christ. In this portion, Mosaccio entirely deviates from the text.The exchange between the tax collector and Peter and the conversation between Christ and Peter happen in the same moment.

Peter and Christ

In the fresco, it appears as if the tax collector asks Peter for the tribute money and Christ directs him immediately to the water. In the text, these are two separate conversations that occur in two separate places. The text states that Christ informed Peter about the coin in the mouth of the fish while they were both inside of a "house." Mosaccio omitted this from his fresco, displaying the conversation outside, parallel to the conversation with the tax collector. Similarly to the other, albeit less obvious, artistic deviations Mosaccio made in this fresco, I argue that Mosaccio's reasoning to change how the conversation between Christ and Peter occurs is likely because adding another sequence to the painting would complicate the visual interpretation of the fresco for the viewer, making the story harder to follow. Furthermore, Mosaccio might have disagreed with Christ's message to Peter, felt that Christ questioning the temple tax would encourage the viewers to question their financial commitment to the Church, or felt that it was not the most important part of the story to display.

Source text: 24 - After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”27 - “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”Representation in the fresco: Mosaccio generally displays the setting in which this story takes place with limited creative deviation. To represent Capernaum, it is clear Mosaccio had some knowledge outside of the text regarding what the city looked like during the time time of Christ.

Capernaum

This fresco signals that Mosaccio was familiar with aspects of Capernaum, like the Sea of Galilee (which is a lake, as referenced in the text), as well as the mountains that surround the Sea of Galilee and Capernaum. One of the artistic deviations made by Mosaccio was the intensity of the mountains, which in reality are not as tall and rigid as the mountains he drew. The second creative decision Mosaccio made was the types of trees painted along the lake. In Capernaum, the trees are palm trees. These decisions might have resulted from the limited physical descriptions of Capernaum in the Bible and specifically in this chapter, or from Mosaccio never having seen Capernaum with his own eyes, and finally the possibility that Mosaccio could have been inspired by other artistic representations of Capernaum that were inaccurate.

Source text: 24 - After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”Representation in the fresco: Mosaccio depicts this interaction with almost complete accuracy. First, we can see Jesus Christ in the center, with his disciples at his side. Secondly, Mosaccio represents the conversation between the tax collector and Peter by angling the tax collector's body toward Peter and displaying one of the tax collector's hands gesturing toward Christ, demonstrating how he is asking Peter if Christ will pay the temple tax.

Jesus and his disciples

The tax collector's other hand is seen pointing toward the temple, again reinforcing the question he is asking regarding the temple tax. The one deviation in this piece is that the text mentions tax "collectors," (plural), and Mosaccio chose to only depict one tax collector. I argue that Mosaccio made this creative decision in the interest of spacing, to prioritize the central display of Christ and his disciples. Furthermore, if Mosaccio had depicted more than one tax collector, it would have been challenging to accurately represent the three sequences in the fresco: the conversation between the tax collector and Peter, Peter retrieving the coin from the fish in the lake, and Peter using the coin to pay the tax collectors.