“The Museum’s towering tree, glowing with light, is adorned with cherubs and some fifty gracefully suspended angels. The landscape at the base displays the figures and scenery of the Neapolitan Christmas crib. This display mingles the three basic elements traditional in eighteenth-century Naples: the Nativity, with adoring shepherds and their flocks; the procession of the three Magi and their exotically dressed retinue of Asians and Africans; and, most distinctively, a crowd of colorful townspeople and peasants. The theatrical scene is enhanced by a charming assortment of animals—sheep, goats, horses, a camel, and an elephant—and by background pieces serving as the dramatic setting for the Nativity, including the ruins of a Roman temple, several quaint houses, and a typical Italian fountain with a lion’s-mask waterspout.

The origin of the popular Christmas custom of restaging the Nativity traditionally is credited to Saint Francis of Assisi. The employment of manmade figures to reenact the hallowed events soon developed and reached its height of complexity and artistic excellence in eighteenth-century Naples. There, local families vied to outdo each other in presenting elaborate and theatrical presepios, often assisted by professional stage directors. The finest sculptors of the period—including Giuseppe Sammartino and his pupils Salvatore di Franco, Giuseppe Gori, and Angelo Viva—were called on to model the terracotta heads and shoulders of the extraordinary crèche figures.

The Museum’s presepio figures, each a work of art, range from 6 to 20 inches in height. They have articulated bodies of tow and wire, heads and shoulders modeled in terracotta and polychromed to perfection. The luxurious and colorful costumes, many of which are original, were often sewn by ladies of the collecting families and enriched by jewels, embroideries, and elaborate accessories, including gilded censers, scimitars and daggers, and silver filigree baskets. The placement of the approximately fifty large angels on the Christmas tree and the composition of the crèche figures and landscape vary slightly from year to year as new figures are added.”

Many years ago, when I was a Chester Dale Fellow at the Met, I had the privilege of working daily in that great American museum in my small but divine office space while researching and writing my doctoral dissertation.  As the days grew shorter and the museum got darker –earlier and earlier in late afternoons early evenings– I could sense that the winter holidays were upon us. Every year, before Thanksgiving, the Met’s staff were hard at work sectioning off the area of the museum when the presipio and tree are annually installed.  Careful spacing and timing are required to raise the precious installation.

As noted in the MMA description above, Saint Francis of Assisi is credited with having created the 1st known Nativity scene in 1223, having been inspired by his recent visit to the Holy Land and seeing the site of Jesus’s traditional birth. The scene Saint Francis created was a living scene, a tableaux vivant, that is, using living people and animals to portray the Biblical account.The scene’s popularity inspired communities throughout Catholic countries to stage similar pantomimes.  You can find similar enactments throughout the Christmas services of thousands of American churches today.

Ciao, ragazzi!  Buona notte!