Not Confined to Biblical Texts : Artists’ Imaginations Soar on Nativity Scenes

Angels, shepherds, the Wise Men all came to Bethlehem to adore the newborn king, if the Nativity stories of Matthew and Luke are taken together.

But if your imagination can soar with the Christmas creche makers down through the ages, so too did the hangman, the ice cream vendor, an organ grinder, the town drunk, a fishmonger with a tank full of eels, and a bizarre bestiary of elephants, monkeys, lions, exotic birds in silver filigree cages--even a unicorn.

Choirs of dimpled seraphim and cherubim in these exquisite miniature Nativity scenes are accompanied by drummers, fifers, bagpipers, harpists, fiddlers (anticipating the invention of the violin by a millennium and a half) and race track-sized trumpets worthy of calling the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to eternity’s starting gate.

In Rome’s Church of San Marco, the presepio, or Christmas crib, has hidden pumps and levers to activate fountains, streams and waterfalls and to send down a blizzard of snow on the cave where the holy family huddles.

In Naples, where in every church and thousands of homes tiny Bethlehems arise in baroque splendor between Dec. 6, the feast of St. Nicholas, and Jan. 6, the coming of the Magi, some of the puppet pilgrims accent the timeless message of the Christ child by arriving at the stable by stagecoach, aboard toy electric trains or down the mountain by cable car.

In others, the gadgetry animates a roistering tavern scene of raised goblets and swaying patrons, for remember, the inn was crowded that night. In the background a perspiring baker in chef’s hat shovels a pizza into an oven glowing with live embers.

But in religious folk art, especially at this forgiving time of the year, there is only the sublime, never the ridiculous.

The 200 pastori mobili , movable creche figures, that adorn the fabulous Angel Tree at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, a masterpiece of 18th-Century Neapolitan art, include an elegant lady in a lace shawl and gold-brocaded gown slouching toward Bethlehem in a gilt and jeweled throne on the back of an elephant. Could this be a Wise Lady?

From the time Nativity scenes began to appear on sarcophagi early in the 4th Century, the imagination of the artist was never confined to the simple stories told by the evangelists Matthew and Luke.

Certainly there was nothing fundamentalist about the interpretation of the biblical texts by the sculptors, painters, architects, costumers, goldsmiths and silversmiths, stage set designers and craftsmen called “animaliers”--specialists in creating tiny lambs, oxen and other stable animals--who produced the now priceless creches on display in museums around the world. The Museo Nazionale di San Martino in Naples and Munich’s Bayerisches National Museum have world-famous collections.

The 18th-Century Neapolitan presepio , in particular, with its surging crowd scenes that often include an outdoor food market, a public hanging or a band concert in the square at Bethlehem, along with the Roman census taker in polished silver helmet and gold-trimmed toga, owes more to the city’s San Carlo opera than to Gospel story.

More lavish than any department store Christmas window, the stage set teems with Neapolitan brio: sad-eyed, hollow-cheeked beggars, the innkeeper serving up a big bowl of pasta, peasants pushing carts full of melons and to demonstrate the artistry of the sculptors, travelers from many lands--Turks, Moors, Slavs, Chinese, Africans.

Here in magnificent miniature is the opposite end of sculpture’s scale from Borglum’s Mt. Rushmore. The whole theatrical presentation required the coordinating skills of a specialist like Lorenzo Mosca, who had the title of “royal Christmas crib director. “

Don Carlos of Bourbon, who became King of Naples in 1734, had a royal creche that numbered 5,950 figures.

His successor, Ferdinand IV, was himself an artist at creating the rococo mannequins. Queen Maria Carolina and her ladies in waiting assisted by sewing the tiny garments from the most expensive silks, velvets and brocades and helped deck the houses of Bethlehem with garlands of sausages, salamis, pepperonis, strings of onions and garlic and gourds of cheese, all done in faultless detail.

In 1567, the Duchess of Amalfi’s inventory listed two great wooden chests filled with 116 crib figures, including the Virgin Mary with a unicorn. Neapolitan noblemen and merchants held open house during the holidays to show off creches that sometimes occupied several floors of a house. Important artists spent months, sometimes years, sculpting the 12- to 15-inch high figures with marvelously expressive faces and moving arms and legs now sought after by collectors.

A few weeks ago, Linn Howard, a modern-day crib director, was up on a stepladder in the Metropolitan’s medieval sculpture hall directing artist Enrique Espinoza in arranging some of these figures in the branches of the 20-foot high Angel Tree that draws hordes of awed children and busloads of enchanted art lovers.

“These angels are my favorites,” said Linn, carefully dusting with a sable brush a smiling cherub adorned with wispy wings and swinging a golden censer, the exquisite creation of Giuseppe Sammartino. “Their placement is important. By the emotion shown in their faces, the figures react to each other like actors on a stage.”

The angel was placed atop the columns of a miniature version of the Roman Forum’s Temple of Castor and Pollux, which sheltered the manger.

“In Neapolitan creches,” Linn explained, “the Christ child often is displayed inside the ruins of a Roman temple to show his triumph over pagan gods.”

The Howard family’s long love affair with Nativity sets began when her mother, Loretta Hines Howard, received as a wedding present a small Neapolitan creche. On her European honeymoon, she scoured the art dealers and antique shops for more crib figures to display in her home in Dayton, Ohio. A collector was born.

Her husband, Howell Howard, had made his fortune in the paper industry. The Hines family had lumber interests. When they moved to New York, Loretta Howard, a painter herself, made their home at Christmas rival a Neapolitan palazzo. She donated important creches to museums and helped President John F. Kennedy arrange a Bethlehem scene in the White House.

Loretta Howard always personally supervised the trimming of the Angel Tree, which she first lent to the Metropolitan Museum in 1957 and then donated to its permanent collection seven years later. Her idea was to combine a traditional Neapolitan presepio with the German Christmas tree by having the swirling, dancing angels seemingly flit through the branches toward the glittering star at the top.

One day she overheard a child ask, “Mommy, why are the angels dressed in rags?”

Then, like Queen Maria Carolina, she bought fine silks, satins and taffetas and stitched up a new wardrobe. Linn Howard, who as a child helped with the decorations, took charge when her mother died.

Every Christmas the Carnegie Institute’s Museum of Art in Pittsburgh displays a masterpiece of Neapolitan baroque that gathers 29 animals and 88 human and angelic figures, including the innkeeper with his bowl of spaghetti, around temple ruins.

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts has an exquisite Venetian creche dating to the early 18th Century.

History credits St. Francis with inventing creche art when he gathered real shepherds, an ox and an ass around a live baby in a manger illuminated by candles and torches near the village of Greccio on Christmas Eve in 1223. The event is depicted in Giotto’s fresco in Assisi.

Tableaux vivants , live Nativity scenes, became all the rage in the Middle Ages and are still popular in many parts of the world. The live Christmas pageant in Bethlehem, Pa., features a cast of more than 100, including three camels, which according to John Cornish, pageant president and a singing shepherd, “are getting increasingly difficult to find.”

“You just can’t use any zoo camel,” he said. “The animals must be trained to carry riders.”