Follower of Maarten van Heemskerck

This panel, painted by a follower of the sixteenth-century artist Maarten van Heemskerck, illustrates the New Testament parable of Christ and the Pharisees. The influence of Heemskerck, among the second-generation of Netherlandish painters to work in Rome, is especially evident in the background’s architectural elements, adapted from structures that appear in Heemskerck’s 1572 print series, Eight Wonders of the World, engraved by Philippe Galle. In the foreground, Christ, gesturing to the gold coin’s image of a Roman emperor, pronounces, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”¹

^1 Mark, 12:17.