The Tribute Money

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On the strength of his work in the Salon du Roi, Delacroix received a commission to decorate the Palais Bourbon’s newly completed library. This drawing on tracing paper represents part of his process of refinement in determining a composition for a pendentive devoted to the biblical subject of The Tribute Money, in which Jesus tells Peter he will find money for the temple tax in a fish’s mouth. Whereas Delacroix painted the Salon du Roi himself, he had the help of assistants for the library, which explains in part why more exacting drawings for this project exist.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art