The Monumental Nativity Scene

The Monumental Nativity Scene, winner of a competition announced by the Pallottine Fathers in 1946 to renew the one donated by the Torlonia family, for the centenary of the institution by Saint Vincent Pallotti, was supposed to be placed in front of the towering apse of the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle. . Not only it had to balance the vertical thrust of the magnificent Baroque church, but also the platform three meters above the floor. It: “…posed great problems of proportions, harmonization of lines, masses, and volumes. According to the sculptor, the measurements had to be suggested by the same structural ratios of the temple: the double square rectangle, 1:2.” “…The exceptionality of the monumental character excluded the elements of the traditional Nativity scene, eliminating those folkloric and pictorial traits, but even effective, but it merged the landscape elements and the cave to delineate a concave curved line with the masses…”.
In the report, it is mentioned that “…the forced symmetry was made less geometrically predictable by a dynamic area of lines on the left and a static one on the right, balancing in the center on the Child, which is also the convergence point of light, maximum and warm in the center, cold and lunar on the sides, a lighting without shadows…”. The sculptor set up a scaled platform in his studio to measure the effects of perspective and correct them. All this is lost, along with the original configuration of the statues, the scenery, the setting in Sant’Andrea della Valle, and the ‘fixed gaze’ of observation. The statues, reduced to the essential, now have a different significance. The child appears oversized for perspective reasons, both because the Madonna was at the highest point of the scene, over three meters, and also because it had to be an exact replica of the one ‘modeled by Saint Vincent Pallotti’ and like the ancient one, dismantled to be shown to people. In three months, the sculptor made the sketches of the statues at 1/3 scale, including an illuminated model. The statues were initially roughed out nude and then dressed: historical research was carried out, and then, for the poses, costumes were rented from theatrical tailors. The sculptor’s son, Sirio, posed for Saint Joseph, for the Assyrian king the boxing champion Erminio Spalla, for the kneeling Indian king a 80-year-old man; the face, instead, is a self-portrait of the Lorenzo Ferri. The statues were completed in 9 months, but the Madonna and Saint Joseph, reworked in a spiritualist or traditional-classical sense, did not satisfy the artist and the Pallottini: “I withdrew in my studio: it was 60 days of continuous work. I worked by day, I worked by night to see on violent lights the plastic effects” to clearly detach the material world, represented by the Wise Men, enhancing the spiritual world with the purest and simplest lines of the Virgin.” This stylistic evolution will lead him to a substantial change in forms and draperies, also appreciable in the contemporary sketch for the second-degree competition for the Doors of Saint Peter’a Basilica. This large space with ribbed vaults, a particularly suggestive environment, now adequately houses the Monumental Nativity Scene. his large cross-vaulted space, a particularly atmospheric environment, now worthily houses the Monumental Crib.