The Tribute Money (Masaccio)

Masaccio's Tribute Money, painted in the 1420s on the wall of the Brancacci Chapel in Florence's church of Santa Maria del Carmine. It tells the Gospel story in which a tax collector asks whether Jesus pays the temple tax, and it shows three moments in one picture: the demand at the center, Peter pulling a coin from a fish's mouth at the left, and Peter paying the collector at the right. Masaccio died in 1428, still in his twenties, yet this wall points Florentine painting toward solid bodies, light falling from one direction and a landscape that fades believably into the distance.