The Parable of the Tribute Money (c. 1580–1600): Art, History and Details

The Parable of the Tribute Money (c. 1580–1600) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Master of the Egmont Albums (Netherlandish, 1480-1620).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The New Testament parable of the tribute money addresses the division between worldly and divine power. Here, the artist depicted Christ in the center of a civic square with one hand pointing toward a king wearing a crown and an ermine robe and the other toward God above. Encouraged by Christ’s words to show each authority its due, the crowd shows deference to both the king and God via facial expression, pose, and gesture. Parables were enduringly popular on prints, stained glass, and decorative objects for their relevance to the issues and choices made by everyday citizens.

Object facts

• Title: The Parable of the Tribute Money
• Date: c. 1580–1600
• Creator attribution: Master of the Egmont Albums (Netherlandish, 1480-1620)
• Culture: Netherlands, late 16th Century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Pen and brown ink, traces of pen and black ink and black chalk, on paper; framing lines in brown ink
• Dimensions: Sheet: 27.2 x 35.4 cm (10 11/16 x 13 15/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Dutch
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1992.115

A detail from the museum

The pose of the kneeling man and the decoration of the door surround in this drawing are both based on details in a woodcut made earlier in the century by the German artist Albrecht Dürer.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Thomas Le Claire Kunsthandel VIII: Master Drawings 1500-1900, exh. cat. by Thomas Le Claire (New York, 1992).
• Turner, Evan. "The Year in Review for 1992." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38-79.
• Dunbar, Burton L., and Edward J. Olszewski (Beraldi). Drawings in Midwestern Collections: A Corpus. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.