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After stints in Rome and Bologna, the artist Francesco “Parmigianino” Mazzola (1503–1540) returned to his native Parma to paint the vault and apse of Santa Maria della Steccata in 1530–31. Progress on the project was slow, and the commission was eventually given to another artist. Parmigianino did finally manage to paint The Wise Virgins and The Foolish Virgins, based on Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25:1–13. Moses and Adam are painted to look like sculptures, a technique known as grisaille, and flank the central characters.

The work of installation artist Sukey Bryan features basic elements—fire, water, earth, sky—which offer transcendent openings. The heavens or tongues of fire—as in The Fire Within, at Stanford Memorial Church at Stanford University—enter a building or public space. She is interested, she says, in “the interaction and transformation of natural elements propelled by tidal, climatic, volcanic and tectonic forces.” In Sky Steps, at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Bryan presents a quiet blue sky on a landscape troubled by drought.

The Tribute Money is the earliest signed painting by Titian. According to the Ren­aissance biographer Giorgio Vasari, the painting was executed for a cabinet door containing a coin collection belonging to Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. A scene rarely depicted in the visual tradition, it may have had special meaning for the duke, whose territories crossed into the boundaries of both the Roman Empire and the Papal States. In Matthew 22:15–22 (cf. parallels in Mark 12:13–17; Luke 20:2–26), Christ is asked by religious authorities if it was acceptable to pay taxes to Caesar.