Word: presepios
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Dates: during 1959-1959
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...lying in the damp, cramped cavern where Jesus may actually have been born is the center and model of numberless Nativity scenes all over the world. Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox or sectarian, there are crèches today almost everywhere there are Christians. There are Nativities as sumptuous as the presepio (manger) in Rome's 11th century Church of Ara Coeli (Altar of Heaven) on Capitoline Hill, with its Christ child-legendarily carved by St. Luke himself-so bedecked with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls and gold that its form is barely discernible and the surplus treasure has to be kept...
...when the mystery plays had become elaborate and verbose. More and more, painters and sculptors began to concentrate on the episodes surrounding the birth of Jesus, and Renaissance nobles as well as churches began to commission cribs. In the early isth century the talk of Florence was a presepio designed by the young artist Bernardo Buontalenti for the son of Cosimo de Medici. One historian described it as "most singular and new, for not only did one see the heavens open and clouds descend while a quantity of angels flew about and came down to earth, but the innumerable figures...
...making of these pious toys became a specialized trade, and Naples was its center, with orders for cribs coming in from all over Europe. In the former royal Neapolitan palace at Caserta are preserved some 300 of the thousands of figurines that once composed Italy's most magnificent presepio, belonging to Bourbon King Charles III of Naples, who spent months arranging it each year in several rooms of the palace, while his queen and her ladies in waiting sewed silk and velvet costumes for the new figures. One of the most striking of the Neapolitan presepios, owned by Collector...
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