Tribute to Caesar (Manfredi)

Tribute to Caesar is a 1610-1620 oil on canvas painting by Bartolomeo Manfredi, showing the Render unto Caesar episode from the New Testament.

Johan Zoffany - Tribuna degli Uffizi - Manfredi

The artist also produced a pendant to the work entitled Christ with the Doctors in the Temple. Both works were originally in cardinal Carlo de' Medici's collection. On his death it passed to the Casino Mediceo di San Marco, then in 1667 the Palazzo Pitti. It finally reached its present home in the Uffizi in 1753, where it was shown in Zoffany's 1776 Tribuna of the Uffizi.^[1][2]

A 1666 inventory misattributed it to Caravaggio but the art critic Voss restored its correct attribution in 1924,^[3] though the 1926 catalogue of paintings in the Uffizi (then under the directorship of Giovanni Poggi) still attributed the work to Caravaggio's school.^[4]

References

1. (in Italian) Evelina Borea (editor), Caravaggio e caravaggeschi nelle gallerie di Firenze: Firenze, Palazzo Pitti, estate 1970, Firenze, Sansoni, 1970
2. (in Italian) Gallerie degli Uffizi, Gli Uffizi: Catalogo generale, Firenze, Centro Di, 1980, p. 363 [1979]
3. (in German)Hermann Voss, Die Malerei des Barock in Rom, Berlin, Propylaen Verlag, 1925, page 453
4. (in Italian) Galleria degli Uffizi: catalogo dei dipinti, Firenze, Giannini, 1926