You say: crib. And suddenly the thought takes you to Naples. In that street named after San Gregorio Armeno which, going up from the ancient Decumanus, leads to the unspeakable beauty of San Lorenzo Maggiore.
There is the world capital of the millenary Neapolitan art of representing the Nativity set in common life.
However, the most beautiful nativity scene of 2020 is not Neapolitan. In fact, it is located in the Venice Lagoon, behind Burano. It is made up of sixty characters who are suspended over the water. 150-170 centimeters tall. Silhouettes cut out of plywood, painted by hand and planted with thin wooden poles on the sandy bottom.
A couple of times a day, when the tide reaches its precise level, they seem to walk on the calm, liquid surface. Miracle within a miracle.
He made it a frutariol of Cavallino Treporti, a small town on the strip of land that descends from the North to help form the body of water separated from the open sea. His name is Francesco Orazio, a round face and an alert air, clear and smiling eyes of someone who has made a dream come true. He is fifty years old and has been cultivating a passion for building nativity scenes since he was seven or eight.
In a small building near his home, in the hamlet of Ca' Savio, he created one with seventy-centimetre statues, some mobile ("They are very complex and expensive"). A real attraction since, in the pre-Covid era, up to 150-200 people a day went to admire it ("Now it's not possible").
To visitors a simple pink sheet gives Friar Francesco what belongs to Friar Francesco, i.e. the "invention" of the Crib, in the Holy Night of 1223, in that of the Rieti forest of Greccio.
In 1290-91 Arnolfo di Cambio created the first crib sculptural complex, simply composed of the Holy Family, ox and donkey sketched in a single piece, and the three Magi (actually Mary holding the Child Jesus in her arms is later). It is kept in Santa Maria Maggiore, in Rome.
From the early thirteenth century it is, however, the fairy tale Dream and Adoration of the Magi in the lunette of the portal of San Mercuriale, in Forlì. It is attributed to the Master of the Months of Ferrara.
In short, art and tradition precede the Franciscan conception. With this without wanting to take anything away from the spirituality that inspired the Saint of Assisi.
Francesco da Cavallino Treporti had the great merit of thinking, two years ago, of building a nativity scene in the Lagoon. He first made it in the waters near his home. But he dreamed of making one in Burano. "We had been asking for permission for a while and finally in October the Water Magistrate granted it to us".
He uses the plural because he cuts out the figures and his cousin, Pierangelo Nardin, «paints them in three dimensions. He's very good: they seem to be looking at you!"
With the previous cribs on the water it happened that the wave motion and the tidal currents carried away some characters. «After a few months they return home, found by the fishermen». This time two Magi are missing. "A boy (a bow, ed) was slalom on a jet ski and hit them. But we're already rebuilding them, so they'll be in place for Epiphany."
Why Burano? Francesco sells fruit and vegetables at the markets held during the week in various locations. When he can he transports her in the truck. He goes to Burano by boat, one of those boats that the Venetians call onomatopoeic mototope (MO-TO-TO-PO, MO-TO-TO-PO, huffs the engine). And he has a stall in Campo Pescheria.
It is also no coincidence that Orazio cultivated his passion for making cribs in Cavallino Treporti. There, a Nativity Scene Competition is being organised, which this year takes place strictly online.
The lockdown has had a hand in increasing the charm of the lagoon nativity scene, greatly reducing the otherwise intense comings and goings of boats and causing a religious silence to fall around the characters.
The Vatican was very impressed and the Holy See contacted Francesco Orazio. "They want to spread the images with a message in five languages." Urbi and orbi.
After all, this is the magic of Christmas, when dreams come trueand an frutariol who with his passion and without intention becomes a protagonist in that global crib that we ourselves animate and inhabit. If only we were able to observe ourselves from the outside. As we do, going back to being children, looking in awe at the statuettes and the architectural perspectives that the Neapolitan masters have been able to export everywhere.
Ps: on December 28th the strong midday wind, or Ostro, swept away the nativity scene in the Lagoon.
Environmental art is exposed to these risks. Francesco Orazio is aware of this, like anyone who is used to experiencing the Lagoon not as an occasional tourist but in any weather and in any season. As soon as possible he will rebuild it. And the supportive rescue given at sea has already started. Fortunately, this time there are "only" wooden shapes to recover, and not the bodies of shipwrecked migrants.
