Rome, shepherds and magi dressed in silk: on the Hill the King's nativity scene
At the Quirinale the 18th century masterpiece, the 100 pieces of the Bourbon treasure
Who knows under how many ceilings the sleeping shepherd has rested, who today lies under the majestic one of the Palazzina Gregoriana at the Quirinale.
The "Benino", as this typical Neapolitan crib figure is called, is just one of the hundred statuettes that make up the King's Crib - a part of it on loan from the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in EUR thanks to the support of the Fondazione Terzo Pilastro - which from today until 20 January is on display at the Colle in the exhibition "Il Presepe. Religiosity and popular tradition'. The collection, amounting to a thousand pieces, collected by Lamberto Loria in 1911 on the occasion of the National Exhibition, was intended to represent the contradictions and differences of the Italian nation. And still today, more than a century later, it succeeds in doing so. Unlike the devotional nativity scene, conceived in Greccio on the Holy Night of 1223 by Saint Francis, the Neapolitan one is the child of the Enlightenment, and was created with the intention of offering a cross-section of the society of the time.
The figures on display, all the work of 18th and 19th century masters, are of refined workmanship, dressed in often precious and bejewelled fabrics, extraordinarily expressive. "Many aristocrats liked to have themselves portrayed as characters in the nativity scene, a sort of small private monument," explains Leandro Ventura, director of the Eur museum, as he wanders through the rooms of the Quirinale.
The silks of San Leucio - where the fabrics of the Bourbons were woven - adorn peasants and squires, there are the Georgian women and the Jew, unmistakable with his payot, and next to them the angels and the ever-present Nativity scene. Real and dreamlike places that mingle: an ideal night, in which the Child comes into the world under Greco-Roman columns, in a medieval village that winds between the houses, the tavern and the market until it leads to the sea, where, in the distance, you can see what looks like Vesuvius. "We made the 'scoglio', the scenery of the crib, in a week, thanks to master crib-builder Nicola Macianiello, and using all kinds of materials," Ventura continues, "from fruit boxes to polyurethane.
And the nativity tradition, nurtured by a niche of enthusiasts willing to spend huge sums of money on a shepherd. Eighteenth-century (on 5 December, at the Arcadia auction house, 134 statuettes were sold for up to 8,000 euro), at the Quirinale it finds its ideal location: a palace that once belonged to the Popes and then to the Savoy family and that houses figures born in Neapolitan workshops, which have travelled all over Italy to antique shops, before landing in Rome in 1911. A long journey through space and time, which may one day bring 'Benino' under new ceilings. Who knows.
by ARIANNA DI CORI
At the Quirinale the 18th century masterpiece, the 100 pieces of the Bourbon treasure
Who knows under how many ceilings the sleeping shepherd has rested, who today lies under the majestic one of the Palazzina Gregoriana at the Quirinale.
The "Benino", as this typical Neapolitan crib figure is called, is just one of the hundred statuettes that make up the King's Crib - a part of it on loan from the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in EUR thanks to the support of the Fondazione Terzo Pilastro - which from today until 20 January is on display at the Colle in the exhibition "Il Presepe. Religiosity and popular tradition'. The collection, amounting to a thousand pieces, collected by Lamberto Loria in 1911 on the occasion of the National Exhibition, was intended to represent the contradictions and differences of the Italian nation. And still today, more than a century later, it succeeds in doing so. Unlike the devotional nativity scene, conceived in Greccio on the Holy Night of 1223 by Saint Francis, the Neapolitan one is the child of the Enlightenment, and was created with the intention of offering a cross-section of the society of the time.
The figures on display, all the work of 18th and 19th century masters, are of refined workmanship, dressed in often precious and bejewelled fabrics, extraordinarily expressive. "Many aristocrats liked to have themselves portrayed as characters in the nativity scene, a sort of small private monument," explains Leandro Ventura, director of the Eur museum, as he wanders through the rooms of the Quirinale.
The silks of San Leucio - where the fabrics of the Bourbons were woven - adorn peasants and squires, there are the Georgian women and the Jew, unmistakable with his payot, and next to them the angels and the ever-present Nativity scene. Real and dreamlike places that mingle: an ideal night, in which the Child comes into the world under Greco-Roman columns, in a medieval village that winds between the houses, the tavern and the market until it leads to the sea, where, in the distance, you can see what looks like Vesuvius. "We made the 'scoglio', the scenery of the crib, in a week, thanks to master crib-builder Nicola Macianiello, and using all kinds of materials," Ventura continues, "from fruit boxes to polyurethane.
And the nativity tradition, nurtured by a niche of enthusiasts willing to spend huge sums of money on a shepherd. Eighteenth-century (on 5 December, at the Arcadia auction house, 134 statuettes were sold for up to 8,000 euro), at the Quirinale it finds its ideal location: a palace that once belonged to the Popes and then to the Savoy family and that houses figures born in Neapolitan workshops, which have travelled all over Italy to antique shops, before landing in Rome in 1911. A long journey through space and time, which may one day bring 'Benino' under new ceilings. Who knows.
by ARIANNA DI CORI