L'Epifania è una festa cristiana celebrata il 6 gennaio (cioè dodici giorni dopo il Natale), che ricorda la visita dei re Magi a Gesù bambino. [...] Nella Chiesa cattolica è una delle massime solennità celebrate, assieme alla Pasqua, il Natale, la Pentecoste e l'Ascensione, ed è quindi istituita come festa di precetto (giorno in cui «i fedeli sono tenuti all'obbligo di partecipare alla Messa; si astengano inoltre, da quei lavori e da quegli affari che impediscono di rendere culto a Dio e turbano la letizia propria del giorno del Signore o il dovuto riposo della mente e del corpo.»

The rule of three: What those magical, royal wanderers through the desert really signify

Of all the actors in the Nativity story, the three wise men are by far the most fun. To a scene that would otherwise verge on the gloomy – a hazardous birth, a stroppy landlord, a derelict stable, uncouth shepherds – they add glitter and mystery. Small wonder that most primary-school thespians, offered the choice between the saintly principals and the glamorous visitors, plump for the velvet robes, the gold-foil headgear and the tissue-boxes stuck with jewels.

T.S. Eliot, filled with the anomie of his age, did his best to drab the wise men down:

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp...
...the night fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.

It didn’t work, however. These surprising visitors to the stable always look splendid, and remarkably fresh for the journey. Longfellow’s kings are perhaps best of all:

Their robes were of crimson silk with rows
Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows,
Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees.

Glum or extravagant, were these figures magi (specifically Persian scholars from the Zoroastrian tradition, tasked with keeping the holy fire of Ormuzd and skilled in astronomy, medicine, magic and astrology), or kings from Tarsus, Saba, Sheba and points east, as Psalm 72 had predicted? Matthew, the only Gospel source, used the Greek word magoi, which signified wise men in general, and had them announce that they had seen the star at its rising. This tilts the balance towards astronomers, which was what the early church imagined them to be.

If these travellers were magi, the most circumstantial source – the Book of Seth, attributed to St John Chrysostom in the fourth century – said there were 12 of them, and that they had been watching for a star on the mythical mountain of Vauls, vaguely in Persia, for generation after generation, ever since Adam in old age had taken refuge there. With him he already had the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, actually pinched from Eden. It was because the gifts were three (symbolising respectively king, God and mortal, since resinous myrrh was used to anoint the body after death) that the travellers, too, were reduced to a trio of seekers cleverly navigating their way across the desert. This version finds favour with modern researchers, who have spilt much ink unravelling the parallels between Zoroastrianism and Christianity (basically, Good and Evil Principles) and pinning down the exact spot in “the east” the magi came from, most probably the border between Iran and Afghanistan, possibly India, via the Silk Road. It is still impossible to know, though, exactly what sort of scholars they were; and much easier to dismiss them, as Rowan Williams did when Archbishop of Canterbury, as simply mythical, together with the ox and the ass.

It is just as hard to say which heavenly phenomenon the wise men were meant to have seen. It was possibly a supernova; possibly a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation Pisces in 7BC; and possibly a comet, since the star’s beams were often said to stream and wave like a bird flying. In the Hellenic-Roman world comets presaged deaths or disasters, not births. Nonetheless the magi had been instructed, according to the Book of Seth, that one particular bright star would announce the coming of a child; and Matthew’s magoi knew it was a king’s star. One modern writer on magi, Martin Gilbert, spins the theory that the wise men themselves represent three stars in conjunction, this time Saturn, Jupiter and Mercury, and that they have swum into Matthew, chapter 2, for purely astrological reasons.

The magi edition of the story did not, however, get much traction in the Middle Ages. Nor has it done on Christmas cards since. A sixth-century mosaic at Ravenna (see picture above) is almost the last time they appear as scholars, looking suitably impecunious, and in the tight trousers and floppy Phrygian caps worn by Persians. “People think they were magi,” wrote John of Hildesheim, whose “Historia Trium Regum” of the mid-14th century was taken then as the last word on the matter, “because the star was so bright, and they did the journey so fast [in 13 days from the Nativity, to arrive on January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany]. But this is a mistake.” The reason they travelled so swiftly, he added, was partly divine assistance and partly because they were on dromedaries, “which can really go”.

In truth, the magi theory languished for simple reasons. Medieval folk knew what kings were; magi they were unsure of, except that they were pagan, followed the teachings of Balaam, and dealt in demons. It was not good to introduce devilry into the Christmas scene, even if the Christ-child could defeat it with one wave of his tiny hand. Magi were linked to Persia, of which well-read Europeans perhaps knew a bit; oriental kings opened up a much more fantastical geography, stretching mistily via several different Indias to the shores of the Great Ocean, where mapmakers scattered rivers and mountains more or less as they liked, with an occasional camel or dragon and sultans, wearing turbans, forlornly perched in tents. The farther east you went, in this continent where all exotic place-names blended together, the more venomous and strange the beasts got, the thicker the trees and the vaster the deserts. That men should venture from such places, at the end of the earth, to find the Christ-child, was much more interesting than a short hop from the Middle East. And it was more interesting (as moderns also tend to think) if the wise men were not too wise but, like kings, often floundering and beset.

For so it seemed they were. To begin with, said John of Hildesheim, they were not magnificent figures of men but small, feeble and scrawny. Yes, he admitted, that was surprising; but so men became as you went farther east. (Conversely, the sheep got bigger, with enormous tails.) The kings also set out singly, since they ruled over lands that were far apart, and came together only when they reached Jerusalem.

Conveniently, a lamp-like star guided each of them; but had it not hung before their noses as close as a fish on a line (for kings, not being astronomers, could not read the sky and needed leading), they would never have made it. An Armenian source said they were also led by an angel; in the late 19th century, Edward Burne-Jones put the star in a walking angel’s hands. As the kings arrived in Jerusalem the star or stars disappeared, and a thick fog descended. Their first words in Matthew, “Where is the child that is born King of the Jews?” came out of mist, confusion and panic. They were taken in, too, by King Herod, who invited them to dine: traditionally on a roasted cock which, in honour of the true king in the stable, rose up and crowed. Herod co-opted them to spy on the child and report back, and they were happy to oblige. Luckily, an angel intervened and warned them not to. They were then told to return “by another way”; starless this time, with no God-assisted steering, they took two laborious years over it, seeking directions from everyone en route. (“And so you see”, wrote John of Hildesheim smugly, “the difference between divine and human operations”.)

Small wonder, perhaps, that though the kings became patron saints of trouble-on-the-road from the 12th century they were not all that popular, because they were not that lucky. Their feast-day, July 23rd, seems to have been usurped in modern calendars by St Apollinaris, who cures gout and the French pox. It was St Christopher who actually kept travellers safe, and it is his image that still swings beside the rear-view-mirror rosaries and fluffy dice; whereas the kings come into play when the tyre is already flat, the speed cop already spotted, or the fine-notice glued to the windscreen by several days of rain.

Myrrh on your clothes

Their names and kingdoms were fairly obscure. For the sake of a good story, though, they had to have both. So they were called Melchior, Balthazar and Gaspar (or Caspar), names that never really caught on, except in northern Europe in the high Middle Ages and in posher parts of west London in the late 20th century (“Melchior, give me that phone at once”). They were kings, respectively, of Arabia and Nubia, Godolia, and Tarsus, and hence their gifts: for gold lay so thick in Arabia’s red earth that you kicked it up as you walked, incense dripped from the trees of Godolia, and you could not wander in parts of Tarsus without myrrh, “moist as wax”, clinging to your clothes.

In fact, being kings, they brought a good deal more. Magi might well have only one small, portable gift each; but Matthew’s wise men had treasure chests. In the Spanish-speaking world, by long tradition, they are the Father Christmas figures, the bringers of unlimited money and sweets. In fact, said John of Hildesheim, the kings carried with them all the ornaments that Alexander the Great had left behind in Asia, and all the wealth that had been liberated from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. The high-crowned travellers of modern Christmas cards plod across the dunes unburdened and unescorted; but medieval people knew that when kings travelled, ever on the move between their palaces as sport, work or blocked drains dictated, they took their chattels, treasure, beds, dogs and all their servants with them. Some painters hinted at this enormous retinue, hustling and holding back horses at the edges of the scene; some donors had themselves put in it, as grooms or falcon-trainers. There were so many hangers-on, said John of Hildesheim, that they could not get lodgings in Jerusalem and had to camp outside, looking like a besieging army.

Flustered as the kings were, the great treasure seemed to get forgotten (except for a small golden apple that was once Alexander’s, offered by Melchior, which immediately fell to ash because it symbolised, unhappily, Eve’s apple in Eden). Some cartoons have pointed out that these gifts were hardly suitable for a baby, or even for his mother (“Three wise men, and no one brought chocolate?” Mary fumes in one). In the 13th-century “Book of Marco Polo” the Christ-child gave them a present in return: a box which, eagerly opened on the way home, was found to contain a stone. Disgusted, the kings threw it down a well, whereupon it burst into flames; they somehow fished it out, took it home and worshipped it. The nature of the gifts, though, was less important than the fact that the kings represented the whole Gentile world coming to pay homage. Traditionally one of them, usually Balthazar, was swarthy, darkening over the centuries until Hieronymous Bosch makes him black as coal, his skin contrasted with robes of gleaming white damask. By then he was assumed to be a king of Ethiopia; the darker he got, the farther south he drifted. He was usually calm, silent and in the background, as if no painter of the medieval or early modern age could imagine a negro who was not a servant. The kings were also all the ages of man, respectively 20, 40 and 60. The oldest, with long snowy hair and beard, struggling to kneel to give his present first, was usually taken to be Melchior; Gaspar was the young blade, rosy-cheeked and beardless and, just occasionally, oriental.

Together, then, the kings added up to Everyman; and as such they became a triune symbol of human striving, hope and folly. Over the featureless desert, over the centuries, they have taken on the characters of politicians, bankers, sunglass-sporting sheikhs, officers of OPEC and rock stars. They have carried election pledges, Turkish delight, overdue library books and barrels of oil. At times of austerity the gifts have become aluminium, potpourri and baby oil. The light they see in the sky, big as the sun, has become a digital stock-price display (for gold, frankincense and myrrh), the neon sign of the Ramada Bethlehem (five stars) and, of course, a UFO. And they have got lost, continually; despite the star, they often get their maps out, scratching at their crowned heads and longing, now, for satnav. The angel’s warning to return by a different way was interpreted early on, by some commentators, as a version of the saying of Heraclitus that you could never step into the same river twice in the endless flux of life.

To sea in a bowl

It is therefore easy to see the kings as an example – perhaps the prototype – of the three hapless travellers, who crop up everywhere once you start to look:

Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl;
If the bowl had been stronger,
My tale had been longer.

This is Gotham in Nottinghamshire, not New York; but it could be either. Wynken, Blynken and Nod sail out in a wooden shoe, evidently unseaworthy, to catch the herring-fish stars and to fall asleep. The three jovial Welshmen go off hunting on St David’s day, they know not for what:


An’ one said, “Mind yo’r e’en, an’ keep yo’r noses reet i’ th’ wind,
An’ then, by scent or seet, we’ll leet o’ summat to our mind.”

Jerome K. Jerome’s three men in a boat row off down the Thames in the 1880s because they are feeling seedy, and in need of a change—only to find that none of them can steer, or navigate a lock, or simply open a tin of pineapple, without great ado and even physical injury.

There was also, in the Middle Ages, another wandering-kings story in which the three monarchs, out hunting frivolously, came upon their own bodies in three graves, respectively just-dead, decayed and reduced to bones. A favourite imago mortis was to show the kings, splendidly clad and with hawks still on their wrists, holding their noses as they gazed in horror. The original three kings, it could be argued, contemplated their own deaths in the offering of myrrh; and also confronted them, as all humans do, by setting out at all. For all beginnings are a type of birth, all lives are journeys part mapped, part unknown, and all journeys end, at least in the world of the here and now.

Brothers, stooges, wise guys

The kings were so neatly arranged, by races and ages, that some chroniclers maintained they were brothers, not strangers. The possibility was emphasised by putting them all in the same bed, straight as pins and with their crowns on, as they appear in stone reliefs at Autun, in Burgundy, and in the Louvre.

Certainly, whatever they had been before, they were forged in comradeship afterwards. Having journeyed back together, they preached Christ together, were baptised together (by St Thomas the Apostle, somewhere in India, where he found them all living in virtuous decrepitude), were buried together, and were gathered up afterwards by St Helena, mother of Constantine, to end as a cosy fraternity of bones in a magnificent gold reliquary that still stands behind the high altar in the great cathedral at Cologne. Before they died they had built a wood and stone chapel on the mountain of Vauls, the summit topped with a golden star that turned in the wind.

That scene of the kings in bed, however, suggests an even richer legacy. For, no matter how close, there are three distinct characters here. At Autun, while they sleep, the angel shows them, or tries to show them, the star. With one finger he touches the hand of Balthazar, who has woken up but is looking the wrong way. Melchior, the dotard, is sound off. Between them – the natural place to confine a spry young troublemaker—Gaspar has opened one eye suspiciously. Here we have the beginnings of the chemistry, and comedy, of three: of first, next, last; wise, wiser, wisest; old, middle-aged, young; good, better, best. In a stained-glass window at Canterbury Melchior is pleading, Balthazar expostulating and young Gaspar, gazing at the star, just sensibly trying to establish where they are.

This is the classic rule of three. One man, often the oldest or ostensibly the wisest, declares or does something, setting up the joke or establishing the pattern; the second queries, challenges or contradicts him, while also taking the theme on; and the third, typically the youngest (littlest, poorest, last), disrupts the pattern and trumps them all. The first two may also gang up on the third, making him seem all the more hapless and all the more the outsider, until, like Harpo Marx deliriously playing through the gibes of Groucho and Chico, the third takes sweet, mad revenge. The ruse crops up in the Three Stooges, in all jokes involving an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman, and almost every fairy tale of three sons or daughters ever written. In those it is always the third who wins love, finds the treasure or saves the day, while the siblings trail home disappointed.

In jokes among the three, or in jokes set up in three, whoever says the third line blows a metaphorical raspberry and gallops away:

How do you make a Venetian blind?
I don’t know; how do you make a Venetian blind?
Stick him in the eye with a hat-pin.

Bathos is most neatly done in lists of three, and the kings have a little list capable of infinite permutations: gold, frankincense, digestive biscuits; gold, diamonds and the deed to a condo in Florida. It is largely because they can be used this way – and are wandering haplessly, and on lurching camels, to boot – that the kings have enjoyed such long popularity, lasting seamlessly into a secular age. No one has fun with the shepherds, although in medieval mystery plays their rough humour was often endearing. They were not characters; and, most important, they were not indubitably three.

For those who feel deprived of the mystical significance of the kings, however, there is a more profound dimension to the rule of three to ponder. For three encompasses everything: past, present, future; here, there, everywhere; earth, sea and air; positive, negative, neutral; this, that and the other. Through these trinities the kings, who might be any Tom, Dick or Harry, wander in search of answers (yes, no, maybe) to mysteries even older than that of Father, Son and Holy Ghost: the birth of light, the dawn of life and the primacy of love.

Dec 20th 2014; The Economist

Il dominio del gotico internazionale in tutta Europa 

Lo stile artistico che dominò in Europa nel periodo che va approssimativamente dal 1380 al 1430 (ma in alcune regioni italiane si protrarrà anche oltre) fu quello che convenzionalmente, viene definito gotico internazionale. Cerchiamo di individuare le caratteristiche storiche e artistiche di questo movimento. 

Il carattere peculiare del gotico internazionale era proprio il suo internazionalismo, quasi che le tradizioni locali fossero state improvvisamente interrotte per essere sostituite da una moda univoca e imperiosa che dilagò rapidamente, e uniformemente, in tutte le principali corti europee: nelle isole britanniche, nella Francia, nella Spagna, nella Boemia e nell'Italia. Una conferma di questo dato è la difficoltà che la critica incontra nella definizione del luogo d'origine di alcune opere legate a questo stile, cosa impensabile per altri periodi della storia dell'arte, nei quali la forza delle tradizioni locali non lascia dubbio sul loro luogo di provenienza. 

Siamo dunque di fronte a un fatto abbastanza straordinario, ad un fenomeno di portata europea segnato da un linguaggio nettamente alternativo rispetto a ciò che avveniva a Firenze a partire dall'ultimo Trecento e che anzi lasciò isolati i fatti toscani ponendosi, in un primo tempo, come opzione vincente. Altra caratteristica fu il suo policentrismo: non è infatti possibile risalire ad un unico focolaio di diffusione, poiché in queste vicende giocarono un ruolo paritetico più centri, quali Siena e A vignone, Milano e Parigi, Bologna,'praga e Digione, Verona e Vienna. 

I principali centri innovatori non erano più Firenze (che con Giotto aveva determinato la grande svolta nella storia della pittura occidentale) o Siena, ma si localizzavano nell'Italia settentrionale, ad Avignone, Parigi, Praga. Il ruolo innovatore passava così all'Italia del nord e all'Europa continentale che erano ora legate da una fitta trama di rapporti e influenze reciproche dovute ai viaggi di artisti, allo scambio delle opere tra i signori, alle relazioni dinastiche fittamente intrecciate per vincoli di parentela. 

La ragione dell'omogeneità del gotico internazionale va ricercata nella situazione storica che caratterizza l'Europa in questo periodo. 

L'unità europea, alla fine del Trecento, era soprattutto un'unità di crisi che investiva tutte le strutture politiche, culturali e sociali sulle quali si era retto il mondo medievale: la Chiesa era lacerata dallo scisma; il Sacro Romano Impero, che con l'imperatore Carlo IV e suo figlio Venceslao IV aveva la capitale a Praga, era ormai ridotto a un puro simbolo sopranazionale; l'istituto della cavalleria era in piena decadenza; il lusso delle corti feudali celava la profonda crisi economica legata sia alle croniche guerre tra stati sia all'evoluzione della rendita fondiaria. 

All'interno di questa situazione si sviluppò, come per contrasto, una produzione artistica il cui dato unificante era costituito, al di là delle caratteristiche formali, dalla preferenza per i temi legati alla vita e ai riti della corte, per i materiali pregiati (grande sviluppo ebbero le oreficerie e gli arazzi), per gli oggetti di piccole dimensioni, quali i dittici dipinti o scolpiti a uso di devozione privata. Il gotico internazionale fu prima di tutto un'arte di corte, che aveva l'aristocrazia come committente e destinatario. Ma in questo clima culturale furono coinvolti anche gli strati superiori di ceti borghesi: gli uomini di legge, i grandi mercanti, i banchieri. In uno sforzo di omogeneizzazione culturale e sociale con l'aristocrazia, i borghesi facevano affrescare le loro dimore e i palazzi municipali con soggetti cavallereschi e in particolare con quelli del ciclo di re Artù. 

La preferenza accordata a opere d'arte di piccole dimensioni, e quindi, per loro natura, di ampia diffusione, fu un dato che determinò l'unitarietà di questa produzione, all'interno della quale giocò un ruolo fondamentale il nuovo e straordinario interesse verso la miniatura che diventò oggetto prediletto di un collezionismo quasi fanatico. Non a caso una sola generazione vede nascere i più grandi nomi della miniatura di tutti i tempi: Jaquemart de Hesdin e i fratelli di Limbourg che lavorano per il duca di Berry, figlio di Giovanni il Buono e fratello del re di Francia Carlo V -, il Maestro delle Ore di Rohan - il più drammatico e appassionatamente espressivo miniatore degli ateliers parigini di primo Quattrocento -, Michelino da Besozzo - attivo a Milano almeno fino al 1450 e definito pictorem supremum - e ancora i miniatori, anonimi ma di altissimo livello, che negli stessi anni operarono alla corte di Praga. 

Come la miniatura anche l'arazzo diventò oggetto di collezionismo e di circolazione di cultura poiché, data la sua natura di arredo "mobile" poteva seguire la corte nelle sue migrazioni da un castello all'altro arrivando a sostituire spesso la pittura ad affresco o a divenirne il modello.

Un mondo cavalleresco e raffinato 

La produzione gotica internazionale predilesse la scelta di soggetti rivolti alla rappresentazione di un mondo idillico, raffinatissimo, quasi che il committente, e con lui l'artista, volesse sottolineare, attraverso la scelta di questi temi, la propria appartenenza a una classe privilegiata. Così i santi e le sante diventarono principi e principesse, le scene religiose pretesti per rappresentazioni profane di cortei cavallereschi (quali spesso vediamo nella scena dell'adorazione dei Magi) o di tornei (sui quali è spesso esemplata la scena di San Giorgio che libera la principessa dal drago). Le immagini belle, aristocratiche, raffinate paiono voler esorcizzare le difficoltà della vita del tempo segnata da guerre, roghi, pestilenze e fame. 

Le caratteristiche formali del gotico internazionale denotano sempre una spiccata predilezione per la linea sinuosa e guizzante. Essa si manifesta soprattutto negli strabilianti panneggi che non coprono mai il corpo, inteso come forma volumetrica, ma lo avvolgono, muovendosi in maniera autonoma, senza alcun rapporto con le membra, quasi alla ricerca di una voluta irrealtà che si ritrova anche nella fantasiosa moda di quel periodo: scarpe dalle lunghissime punte, copricapi bizzarri, maniche che toccano terra. È una moda che veste una ristrettissima classe sociale, egemone del potere e della ricchezza e che viene trasferita, quasi in un doppio di sé, sui personaggi sacri. Ma accanto a queste immagini di eleganza estrema il gotico internazionale amava raffigurare anche il mondo dei poveri, dei contadini, degli uomini selvaggi: si vedano ad esempio i barcaioli e i pastori nel codice delle Ore di Rohan o in quello delle Très riches heures del duca di Berry. Era quasi una riscoperta della vita semplice dopo l'estrema formalizzazione di quella del nobile e del ricco, ma aveva anche una funzione di confronto tra due classi, ben distinte e incomunicabili tra loro: quella dell'escluso, del perdente delle grandi rivolte contadine e popolari che, nella seconda metà del Trecento, erano scoppiate in tutta l'Europa, e quella della corte che viveva in un'atmosfera di cerimoniale ostentazione. 

Questa sorta di duplicità nei confronti dei soggetti si manifesta anche nel sistema di raffigurazione spaziale; accanto ad un interesse per la rappresentazione tridimensionale che sopravvive a stento e che evidenzia come il modo giottesco di rappresentare non venga più inteso come la sola norma valida, si possono trovare anche soluzioni alternative, persino all'interno dello stesso dipinto in modo che, vicino a sfondi e paesaggi assolutamente appiattiti, senza traccia di tridimensionalità - particolarmente presenti in arazzi, miniature e affreschi - possano coesistere altri elementi, quali edifici, costruiti come concreti volumi. Ne è un esempio chiaro la serie dei Mesi, miniati prima del 1416 dai fratelli di Limbourg per Les très riches heures del duca di Berry, in cui la rappresentazione dei castelli è generalmente esemplata su opere esistenti e dove è possibile vedere ancora l'eco della maniera di Ambrogio Lorenzetti nel paesaggio in primo piano in cui sono presenti le ombre portate. 

Accanto alla scoperta del paesaggio vi fu quella della natura, particolarmente evidente in quella sorta di enciclopedie medico-dietetiche a uso familiare che vanno sotto il nome di Tacuina sanitatis e che ebbero la loro massima diffusione in Lombardia negli ultimi decenni del XIV secolo. Qui le piante erano rappresentate nel loro ambiente naturale e, attraverso l'illustrazione miniata, era spiegato il modo di coltivarle e l'uso medico al quale erano destinate. Questi manoscritti conobbero una diffusione straordinaria e contribuirono a divulgare i modelli di rappresentazione lombarda in Europa, soprattutto presso le corti perché l'alta aristocrazia amava questo genere di rappresentazioni a un punto tale da giocare un ruolo importante nello sviluppo naturalisti co della pittura e della scultura tardo-gotica. 

Accanto all'interesse per il paesaggio e la natura emerse prepotente. anche quello per il ritratto, che aveva già una tradizione precedente rivolta soprattutto alla glorificazione dell'istituto dinastico; a questo proposito particolarmente notevole fu la produzione di Pisanello. 

Le origini e gli sviluppi del gotico internazionale 

Le radici culturali sulle quali crebbe lo stile del gotico internazionale vanno ricercate all'indietro, fin dentro la metà del Trecento, e, in particolare, nella produzione di alcuni centri. Tra questi spiccano: Avignone, dove nel 1344 morì Simone Martini, l'artista la cui maniera ebbe un peso determinante per la nascita di questo stile, e dove era ancora operoso il viterbese Matteo Giovannetti, uno fra i suoi primissimi protagonisti; Bologna, che in un ambiente fervido di studi e di circolazione di artisti, sulla metà del secolo vide attivo il grande Vitale; Firenze, dove lavorava il lombardo Giovanni da Milano; Treviso, città in cui, nel 1352, Tommaso da Modena lasciò una serie di straordinari ritratti nella sala capitolare della chiesa di San Nicola (e l'influenza di Tommaso sarà determinante per la pittura boema di quegli anni). 

Sembra che lo stile internazionale guardi quasi con nostalgia al passato, al periodo pregiottesco, al gotico. Ma la generazione di artisti attiva a partire circa dal 1380 elaborò una maniera del tutto nuova che in nessun caso può essere definita gotica. 

Il periodo in cui si sviluppò lo stile internazionale fu lo stesso in cui a Firenze sorgeva quello rinascimentale di Brunelleschi, Masaccio e Donatello. Tuttavia i due movimenti furono del tutto indipendenti e per molti versi antagonisti: il Rinascimento costituiva una rottura col gotico internazionale e si rifaceva piuttosto alla lezione giottesca. Nella prima metà del Quattrocento lo stile rinascimentale restò sostanzialmente minoritario e la produzione artistica italiana continuò a orientarsi prevalentemente sullo stile internazionale. Solo nella seconda metà del secolo si ebbe il consolidamento e la diffusione delle scelte· rinascimentali e lo stile internazionale conobbe in Italia un irreversibile declino. 

Sarà invece la pittura fiamminga, con Robert Campin e i fratelli Van Eyck, a riprendere alcune ricerche portate avanti dal gotico internazionale e a non interrompere, come accadde invece con le nuove scelte fiorentine, i legami con questo stile.

International Gothic emerged as a style of art in Europe at the end of the 14th century. It was characterized by strong narrative and courtly elegance, coupled with exact naturalistic detail, decorative refinement, surface realism and rich decorative colouring. The style was neglected by historians until the end of the 19th century, when Louis Courajod, a professor at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris, first pointed out its international character – international because of the similarity between stylistic trends and techniques that appeared in geographically distant European centres. Artists from France, Italy, Austria, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) and England developed an artistic style that intensified elements of the Gothic during its last flourish, and that became a prelude to the Early Renaissance. 

The development of the International Gothic movement was influenced by the same factors that provoked a European crisis in the political, social and cultural spheres at this time. The decline of the Holy Roman Empire signalled the end of its unifying role in the Christian culture of the West, and the schism in the church prior to the death of Emperor Charles IV (1316-78), coupled with the removal of the papal court to Avignon, further undermined the absolute authority of the Church. This religious crisis paved the way for a refiguring of religious themes in art, with an increased emphasis on elements of fantasy and personal piety. The movement of the papal throne to the West, along with the establishment of Charles IV's throne in Prague, helped to develop a dialogue among artists travelling between Europe's various cultural centres. 

Religious figures and scenes were the period's predominant subject matter. In the Annunciation (above) by Lorenzo Monaco (c. 1370 -1425), the painter's emotional intensity and subtlety of feeling are evident and the work displays a particularly graceful flow of line. These qualities also appear in his panels titled The Flight into Egypt (c. 1405) and The Coronation of the Virgin (1413). Some artists set themselves apart from their Gothic predecessors, however, by the close observation of nature and lavish craftsmanship that characterized their work. One of the period's most memorable paintings is the Wilton Diptych (below). This devotional masterpiece is an icon of Catholic heritage, yet the artist has never been identified – art historians cannot even agree on the artist's country of origin, such is the international nature of the style. The altarpiece was most likely commissioned by the English king, Richard II, whose coat of arms and white hart appear on the diptych's exterior. Hinged like a book so that it is portable for use in prayer, the interior shows the king being presented to the Virgin Mary. 

The succession of wars and the terrible cost of the Hundred Years' War between England and France, that lasted from 1337 to 1453, dramatically changed the social and political landscape of Europe and further influenced the development of its art. The tapestry Offering of the Heart (below) expresses a nostalgia that members of the old order felt for the court's feudal values, outdated chivalry, extravagance and splendour. Economic crisis and civil strife had undermined the position of the aristocracy and produced an increasingly powerful and sizeable middle class of merchants and bankers. The tapestry is therefore an indirect expression of the struggle for power between them and the merchants. The bourgeoisie, meanwhile, were gaining increasing influence and were perhaps more attracted to some of the ruling class's venal excesses than to the courtly customs that sometimes masked them.

The elegance and emotional exaggeration of the International Gothic style combined with a new kind of humanism, which found its way into the artistic depiction of figures and themes. At the Castello della Manta in Saluzzo, Italy, a student of Giacomo Jaquerio (c. 1375-1455), known only as the 'Master of Manta', painted frescoes on the walls around the baronial hall, including the scene called 'The Fountain of Youth' (detail below). It shows elderly people entering the miraculous waters to be rejuvenated, and the work is full of lively detail and strong colours. The artist was one of many painters associated with the International Gothic who were highly sensitive to the sense of movement underlying the composition. Further examples of the International Gothic aesthetic are La Grande Pietà Ronde (c. 1400) by Jean Malouel (c. 1360-1415), which is characterized by intense emotion and a soft, dream-like pictorial quality, and The Road to Calvary (1440) by Jaquerio, a crowded canvas in which the sharp angles of innumerable spears suggest shared suffering, the scene realized with a religious intensity and remarkably elegant composition. 

Pisanello (c. 1394-1455) was a very competent draughtsman and many of his works feature animals. The representation of animals, vegetables, architecture and artefacts within the decorative landscape is achieved with the same attention to detail and harmony as that given to the figures. In Madonna with the Quail (below), the quail at the Virgin's feet, the other birds, the leafy wreath and the fruits blend into an idealized portrait of the Madonna and Child.

The illumination of Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (c. 1413-89; see Winter below) by the Flemish Limbourg brothers (a.1402-16), completed after their deaths by Jean Colombe, is replete with animals, vegetables and wide landscapes, peopled by both aristocratic and peasant figures.

While the art of the past had represented the ideal with much recourse to imagery from the imagination, the International Gothic style produced a synthesis of the ideal – in the sense of a nostalgic looking back to the glory of the past – with a descriptive and detailed realism. The Adoration oj the Magi (below) by Gentile da Fabriano (c. 1370-1427) exemplifies the fusion of these two artistic impulses and represents the peak of the artistic movement. The altarpiece was painted for the Cappella Strozzi, in the Santa Trinita church in Florence (now the sacristy) and has a strong sense of narrative that is typical of International Gothic. The artist depicts the complete story of the adoration of the Magi as told in the Bible, with a vast array of lavishly attired figures. The larger figures in the foreground, nearest to the Madonna and Child, represent the chivalrous tradition of honour and servitude, and the more animated procession of knights and huntsmen, winding its way to a turreted castle in the distant hills in the background, includes more plebeian figures. Behind the youthful king in the centre is the Florentine banker Palla Strozzi, who is included in recognition of his commission of the work. 

There is a notable aura of meditation and purpose in the most important works of the International Gothic style, even within the context of its close detail and occasional extravagance. Many of the miniatures were portable so that the viewer could easily use the work of art for private contemplation. The artistic aim was always to familiarize the viewer with the myriad details of the pictorial landscape and the individual characters of the figures. While fully appreciating the realistically presented figures in all their finery and glory, the viewer was at the same time exposed to the light and space that surrounded them-an experience designed to lift and expand the spirit.  

Domanda: "Presepe" o "presepio": qual è la forma più corretta in italiano? Esistono delle differenze tra i due termini? Mentre stavo preparando il presepe a me e mia sorella è sorto un dubbio: «ma stiamo preparando il presepe o il presepio?». E' una curiosità sulla lingua italiana che ci è venuta in mente poichè io uso la prima forma ed invece lei la seconda ma quale delle due è effettivamente quella corretta? Esiste una differenza tra "presepe" e "presepio"? Oppure è corretto usare entrambe le forme? 

Risposta: Nella lingua italiana usare "presepe" o "presepio" è indifferente. Cercando su alcuni dizionari online ho trovato per esempio che per il Treccani non c'è alcuna differenza e sul Pianigiani è possibile scrivere "presepe" o "presepio" senza alcun errore. Questo è dato dal fatto che in latino sono presenti sia la forma "praesaepium" (neutro di II declinazione), da cui è derivato "presepio", sia la forma "praesaepe" (neutro di III declinazione)", da cui è derivato "presepe", entrambe con il significato di "mangiatoia". […] La cosa importante da ricordare è che per entrambi i termini il plurale è sempre "presepi".

Nell’uso comune, rappresentazione plastica della nascita di Gesù che si fa nelle chiese e nelle case, nelle festività natalizie e dell’Epifania, riproducendo scenicamente, con figure formate di materiali vari e in un ambiente ricostruito più o meno realisticamente (talora anche anacronistico), le scene della Natività e dell’Adorazione dei Magi.

Italian Christmas Cribs, Nativity Displays and Presepi in Italy

Traditionally, the main focus of Christmas decorations in Italy is the Nativity scene, 
presepe or presepio in Italian. Every church has a presepe and they can be found in squares, shops, and other public areas. Displays often go beyond the manger scene and may even include a representation of the entire village. Presepi are usually set up starting December 8, the Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception, through January 6, Epiphany but some are unveiled on Christmas Eve. Many people set up a Christmas crib in their house and figurines for nativity scenes are made in many parts of Italy, with some of the best coming from Naples and Sicily. Although the presepe is usually set up before Christmas, baby Jesus is added on Christmas Eve. The Nativity scene is said to have originated with St. Francis of Assisi in 1223 when he constructed a nativity scene in a cave in the town of Greccio and held Christmas Eve mass and a nativity pageant there. Greccio reenacts this event each year. Carving figurines for nativity scenes started in the late 13th century when Arnolfo di Cambio was commissioned to carve marble nativity figures for the first Rome Jubilee held in 1300. The nativity can be seen in the museum of Santa Maria Maggiore Church.

Best places to see Chrsitmas Cribs, or Presepi, in Italy

Naples is the best city to visit for their presepi. Hundreds of nativity scenes are erected throughout the city. Some creches are very elaborate and may be handmade or use antique figures. Starting December 8, the Church of Gesu' Nuovo, in Piazza del Gesu', displays nativity scene art work from the Neapolitan Nativity Scenes Association. The street Via San Gregorio Armeno in central Naples is filled with displays and stalls selling Nativity scenes all year. 

Vatican City erects a huge presepe in St. Peter's Square for Christmas and is usually unveiled on Christmas Eve. A Christmas Eve mass is held in St. Peter's square, usually at 10 pm. 

In Rome some of the biggest and most elaborate presepi are found in Piazza del Popolo, Piazza Euclide, Santa Maria in Trastevere, and Santa Maria d'Aracoeli, on the Capitoline Hill. A life-size nativity scene is set up in Piazza Navona where a Christmas marketplace is also set up. The Church of Saints Cosma e Damiano, by the main entrance to the Roman Forum, has a large nativity scene from Naples on display all year.

Bethlehem in the Grotto - an elaborate lifesize nativity scene is created each year and transported to a beautiful grotto in the Abruzzo commune of Stiffe, about 20 miles from L'Aquila. The scene is illuminated and can be visited during December.

Verona has an international display of nativities in the Arena through January.

Trento in northern Italy's Alto-Adige region has a large nativity scene in Piazza Duomo.

Jesolo, 30 km from Venice, has a sand sculpture nativity made by top international sand sculpture artists. It takes place daily in Piazza Marconi through mid-January. Donations are used to fund charitable projects.

Manarola in Cinque Terre has a unique ecological nativity powered by solar energy.

Celleno, a tiny town in the northern Lazio region about 30 km from Viterbo, has a magnificent presepe that is set up for viewing all year. Celleno is also famous for its cherries.

Many churches in Milan have elaborate nativity scenes set up around Christmas time.

Presepio Museums in Italy

Il Museo Nazionale di San Martino in Naples has an elaborate collection of nativity scenes from the 1800s.

Il Museo Tipologico Nazionale del Presepio, under the church of Saints Quirico e Giulitta in Rome, has over 3000 figurines from all over the world made out of almost anything you can imagine. The museum has very limited hours and is closed in summer but they are open each afternoon December 24-January 6. In October they have a course where you can learn to make presepe yourself.

Il Museo Tipologico del Presepio in Macerata in the Marche region has more than 4000 nativity pieces and a 17th century presepe from Naples.

Presepi Viventi, Italian Living Nativity Scenes

Living nativity pageants, presepi viventi, are found in many parts of Italy with costumed people acting out the parts of the nativity. Often living nativity scenes are presented for several days, usually Christmas Day and December 26, and sometimes again the following weekend around the time of Epiphany, January 6, the 12th day of Christmas when the three Wise Men gave Baby Jesus their gifts.

Top places to see living nativity scenes, presepi viventi, in Italy

Frasassi Gorge has one of the largest and most suggestive nativity pageants in Italy. Held on a cliff near the Frasassi Caves, the Genga Nativity Scene includes a procession up the hill to a temple and scenes from everyday life during the time of Jesus' birth. More than 300 actors take part and proceeds are given to charity. Usually held on December 26 and 30.

Barga, a beautiful medieval hill town in northern Tuscany, has a living nativity and Christmas pagaent on December 23.

Chia, near Soriano (see Northern Lazio Map), holds a large living nativity on December 26 with more than 500 participants. There's also one nearby in Bassano.

Custonaci, a small town near Trapani in Sicily, has a beautiful nativity scene re-enacted inside a cave. A tiny town was buried in the cave by a landslide in the 1800's. The cave has been excavated and now serves as a setting for the interesting live nativity events December 25-26 and early January. More than just a nativity, the village is set up to resemble an ancient village with craftspeople and small shops.

Equi Terme, in the Lunigiana region of Tuscany, has a reenactment of the nativity that takes place throughout the village in a beautiful hillside setting.

Vetralla, in the northern Lazio region, has the oldest living nativity in the region.

Rivisondoli, in the Abruzzo region (Abruzzo map), has a reenactment of the arrival of the 3 kings on January 5 with hundreds of costumed participants. Rivisondoli also presents a living nativity December 24 and 25.

L'Aquila and Scanno also in the Abruzzo region have living nativities on Christmas Day as do many other small villages in the region.

Liguria has living nativity scenes in the towns of Calizzano, Roccavignale, and Diano Arentino during December.

Milan has an Epiphany Parade of the Three Kings from the Duomo to the church of Sant'Eustorgio, January 6.

King Charles's passion for building was not consummated with Caserta. He also wished to build a colossal palace for he poor, and Ferdinando Fuga was commissioned to start work on the Reale Albergo dei Poveri in 1751. The actual building, of which the front is 354 metres long, only represents half the original project, as the work on it was interrupted periodically until 1829. Here vagabonds and helpless orphans, the unemployed and unemployable, were to be housed, fed, educated and, if possible, converted into useful citizens. 

The foundation of this enormous hospice was partly inspired by the Dominican Father Rocco, the popular preacher and 'city missionary', one of the most curious Neapolitan characters of the eighteenth century. Born in 1700, he died in 1782; and he spent his long dedicated life among the populace, fulminating against vice, settling petty lawsuits, beating the quarrelsome into peace and fighting sinners with a stout stick or with a heavy crucifix he carried in his belt when his floods of eloquence failed. The lazzaroni responded to one who could express himself masterfully in their language, who could thrill their impressionable minds with the images of his own religious ardour, who fearlessly thrust his way into their lowest haunts, startling the taverns and brothels with apocalyptic visions of woe. 'Now then,' he shouted, 'I want a sign of your repentance and good intentions. Those who are well determined lift your arms!' Every arm was duly raised, and Father Rocco remained silent. After gazing long and expressively, first at the crucifix, then at the image of the Madonna before him, he exclaimed: 'Oh my God! would that I now had a sabre to cut off those hands which have offended you with forgery, with usury, with thievery, with homicides, and with sins of the flesh, so that they may no longer commit these evil actions!' And immediately every hand went down and hid itself, and there was a general outburst of sobbing. Tanucci joked with Galiani about the effect of these sermons, 'which made those rabid propagators of the species laugh and set to work more merrily than before'. Father Rocco was a valuable intermediary between the King and the populace and vice versa. 'The court understands his importance,' wrote Swinburne, 'and has often experienced the good effects of his mediation; though of late years an attention to the plentiful supply of cheap provisions, and a strong garrison, have kept the populace quiet, to a degree unknown in former times, yet particular circumstances may yet render a Neapolitan mob formidable to government. During a late eruption of Vesuvius, the people took offence at the new theatre being more frequented than the churches, and assembled in great numbers to drive the nobility from the opera; they snatched the flambeaux from the footmen, and were proceeding tumultuously to the cathedral to fetch the head of San Gennaro, and oppose its miraculous influence to the threats of the blazing volcano: this would undoubtedly have ended in a very serious sedition if Father Rocco had not stepped forth, and after reproaching them bitterly with the affront they were about to put upon the saint by attending his relics with torches taken from mercenary hands, ordered them all to go home and provide themselves with wax tapers; the crowd dispersed, and proper" measures were taken to prevent its gathering again.' 

Father Rocco's influence on Charles, and later on his son, led to the foundation of many charitable institutions, of which the Albergo dei Poveri is the most striking. Naples was also indebted to him for the first experiment in lighting the streets. All previous attempts had failed when he suggested setting up holy shrines at every convenient corner, beginning with the darkest and most dangerous; and he soon roused a general competition for supplying the lamps before these shrines with oil. They are kept burning to this day in many a sombre alley, and until 1806 they provided the city's only regular illumination. Father Rocco began a vigorous campaign against gambling, which had become a general epidemic. To persuade the King to support it, he is said to have compiled a list of the noble families ruined by this vice, so that Charles exclaimed in horror: 'Father Rocco, I do not wish to be a king of beggars ! - hence the decree against gambling of November 24, 1753. 

Nowhere else has the pious custom of the presepe, or Christmas crib, assumed so many delightful forms, and Father Rocco did much to popularize it. He wished to bring the Mystery of the Nativity to the people and make them visualize it. Half his cell was filled with a presepe  which he constantly improved with additional figures and effective details. The figures were usually about six inches high carved in sycamore wood. Before Christmas he bustled about the shops of sculptors and artisans, such as still exist in the Vico dei Figurari, to criticize and encourage their work. A realist himself, he persuaded them to avoid the rococo mannerisms of the sculptors then in vogue. He set up a Nativity scene in a grotto near Capodimonte, which the King often stopped to admire on his way to the hunt. 

Charles himself designed and modelled the settings for the Christmas crib in the royal palace, dabbling in clay and cutting up cork for the manger, while the Queen and Princesses sewed and embroidered costumes for the figures, each according to scale. The aristocracy and wealthy merchants followed the King's example, so that the presepe increased in gorgeousness and variety, and this was the period of its highest artistic development. 

The most elaborate consisted of three scenes, the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Tavern (or divmarium); occasionally the Massacre of the Innocents was added. The skyborne angel waking the shepherds was more or less conventional, but fancy ran riot in the Tavern scene, where peasants were gathered in cheerful gossip or sang to the guitar, while a rubicund innkeeper prepared a feast to satisfy the most ravenous appetite. Palestine was conceived in terms of the Neapolitan landscape; often Vesuvius erupted boisterously in the background. Hundreds of figures were scattered across the scene; except for the Blessed Virgin, Saint Joseph and the angels, who wore the traditional robes, all were clad in contemporary costume. The Magi wore long cloaks like the knights of San Gennaro. Their retinue were decked in the trappings of Africa and Asia; Mongols and Kaffirs mingled with Circassians and Hindoos; pages, cup-bearers, grooms, guards, slaves were loaded with precious caskets, besides the gold and frankincense and myrrh. The peasants and shepherds wore the festive apparel of Ischia, Procida and other parts of the Two Sicilies. Some were portraits of well-known personalities like Father Rocco; occasionally Pulcinella and characters from the Commedia dell' Arte were introduced. Such famous sculptors as Sammartino, Celebrano and the Bottiglieri brothers devoted much time and skill to this form of art. Some specialized in domestic animals; others in fish, fruit, vegetables and groceries. Exuberance and profusion flourish; most of these tableaux interpret the jovial, sensuous, expansive aspects of the Neapolitan temperament. The artisans shared the faith of the simple shepherds. 

The King was at one with his people in exalting the family cult by this outward symbol of the sacred mystery. As long as the Bourbon dynasty ruled Naples, the presepe was the centre of Christmas rejoicings. The whole Court accompanied the King and Queen from church to church to visit the Nativity scenes which were their special pride. Soft organ music and the light of candles helped to foster the illusion of reality. The crib in the Jesuit Church of Gesu Nuovo always attracted a large crowd, as its Babe was said to have spoken to a Moorish slave and converted him. A hymn commemorated the miracle: 'The Infant Jesus in the manger speaketh to a slave.' Outside in the streets, Calabrian bagpipers, like the Biblical shepherds, wailed poignant melodies. In private houses the Babe was usually removed from the manger before Christmas Eve. Then a party would be given, enlivened with music and impromptu poems until midnight, when a priest recited prayers, after which the Babe was consigned to the youngest girl in the family, who restored it to the crib. 

'In many houses a room, in some a whole suite of apartments, in others a terrace upon the house-top, is dedicated to this very uncommon show,' wrote Mrs Piozzi. 'One wonders, and cries out it is certainly but a baby-house at best; yet, managed by people whose heads, naturally turned towards architecture and design, give them power thus to defy a traveller not to feel delighted with the general effect; while if every single figure is not capitally executed and nicely expressed beside, the proprietor is truly miserable, and will cut a new cow, or vary the horse's attitude, against next Christmas, coûte que coûte [cost what it may]. And perhaps I should not have said so much about the matter if there had not been shown me within this last week presepios which have cost their possessors fifteen hundred or two thousand English pounds; and rather than relinquish or sell them, many families have gone to ruin. I have wrote the sums down in letters not figures, for fear of the possibility of a mistake. One of these playthings had the journey of the three kings represented in it, and the presents were all of real gold and silver finely worked; nothing could be better or more livelily finished. '"But, sir," said I, "why do you dress up one of the wise men with a turban and crescent, six hundred years before the birth of Mahomet, who first put that mark in the forehead of his followers? The eastern magi were not Turks; this is a breach of costume." My gentleman paused, and thanked me; said he would inquire if there was nothing heretical in the objection; and if all was right, it should be changed next year without fail.' 

Charles became so addicted to this Neapolitan custom that he introduced it into Spain, whence he continued to order figures of shepherds and other Nativity properties from Naples.

Provvedimenti ancora più solleciti si registrano a Napoli dove fin dal 1770 il governo ordina che tutti gli edifici pubblici, i Banchi, i palazzi dei ministri, degli ambasciatori e dei nobili di grande casato, tengano fanali accesi di notte davanti alle porte e agli angoli delle strade; in seguito ne viene collocato un centinaio lungo la strada di Forcella. Ma si tratta di un’illuminazione di breve durata in quanto le luci vengono presto abbattute da malviventi che necessitano del buio per poter svolgere le loro illecite attività. Per ovviare a questo grave inconveniente si racconta che padre Gregorio Maria Rocco (1700-1782), ottenuta la licenza dal re, inizia a disporre nei punti più trafficati, e in apposite nicchie, 300 copie di un quadro raffigurante la Vergine e 100 figure del Cristo montate su altrettante croci di legno: da quel giorno si registra una vera e propria gara da parte dei fedeli per mantenere continuamente accesi, sia di giorno che di notte, due fanali ai lati di ciascuna raffigurazione sacra. Con questo espediente Napoli riesce finalmente ad essere illuminata, persino nei vicoli in precedenza troppo bui e pericolosi.

Making a scene with presepio nativity figures

• THE AUSTRALIAN, DECEMBER 20, 2014
• Last year our stolid Canberra crescent of solid brick-houses from the 1960s became home to an architecture award-winning new house that changes colour as you walk past and has a pool on the front deck. To say it’s cutting edge as it changes from a deep pink to purple is clearly understatement.
• It also has a huge glass foyer that would do a middle office tower in Manhattan proud to offset the transplanted mature weeping cherries and camellias in the front yard. For all these modern touches it was doubly, no triply, surprising to walk past at the beginning of December and see an almost life-size nativity scene — Mary, Jesus and Joseph and the three kings — nestling happily in front of the water feature in the foyer.
  
  
• It was a clash or meeting of the 21st and 13th centuries, a meeting all the more remarkable for me to consider that one more Italian tradition is moving into modern Australia. For years now Christmas in Australia has included a flood of Italian treats, led by the now ubiquitous panet­tone, into delis, department stores and gourmet shops.
  
  The appeal to non-Italian markets has gone so far that panettone tins, once reserved only for ancient recipes and the baking family’s lineage, now feature Santas and American-style Christmas scenes. Was I witnessing the migration of Italy’s great Christmas tree alternative — the presepio — to Australia and how was it happening?
  
  The presepio, or nativity or crib scene, in Italy is far more than a little plastic scene depicting Jesus in the manger, perhaps with a wise man or three.
  
  The presepio is an 800-year-old tradition including a sweep from high art to church devotions and down to the most humble family presentation that was once the universal Christmas display devoid of wasteful and space-consuming trees.
  
  While the holy family of Mary, Jesus and Joseph is the centre of the prespio, some have become so grand and huge that they cover galleries of activity depicting whole villages or huge tracts of countryside. Putting out the presepio, without the baby Jesus until Christmas Eve of course, is as big a deal in Italy as the arrival of the Christmas tree in Australia.
  
  Being an Aussie-Italo family we do both on the same day and lay out a collection of  scores of figures depicting an Italian village surrounded by Abruzzi shepherds with their traditional bagpipes. (They traditionally came to play in the streets of Rome when high mountains of Abruzzo were covered with snow at Christmas.)
• It was St Francis of Assisi who started the presipio in 1223 in the village of Greccio using real people, real animals and a real grotto to encourage devotion to the birth of Christ. By 1300 there began to be marble depictions of the scene of the birth of Christ with a donkey and ox present accompanied by a few shepherds and, later, the three wise men. Presepi became art forms, particularly in Naples and Sicily, and live portrayals as well as large representations in churches spread through Italy.
  
  King Charles III of Naples commissioned a huge presipio from the greatest artists of the day and now, all through the year, the church of Cosma and Damiano, on the edge of the Forum in Rome, displays such a scene so large it is difficult to find Jesus in the crib because of the various depictions of village life, from trades to cooking, that surround them.
  
  But it is the family presepio that takes pride of place in Italian hearts. Philosopher and writer Umberto Eco has written lovingly of his family’s presepio and how his father would gradually move the three kings through their house from December 8, the traditional day for the presepio to go up, until January 6, the feast of the Ephinany when the kings arrive with their gifts, when they arrived on the sideboard.
  
  Laura Bush caused a stir when she was in the White House by installing a presepio that had been a gift to the White House from Naples, but most modern Italian families can’t afford the expensive handcrafted wooden figurines that include shepherds, sheep, ducks, the “duck lady”, the goose man, the wine seller, the water carrier, the fisherman ... you get the idea.

• Like ours, gathered across 30 years of trips to Italy, many scenes have eclectic members from different styles and types, many plastic, some wood and now with tiny electric motors driving fires under cauldrons and water through fountains and wells. Children invariably fiddle and fuss with the placement of the characters right up to Christmas Eve and some fathers are known to smuggle extra figures from Italy that have been purchased from Brico — the Italian equivalent of Bunnings, which clears out its summer barbecue area and fills it with diorama backgrounds, electric gadgets and a vast array of figures.
  
  With Brico filling the gap for families wanting a cheaper traditional alternative to the more northerly Christmas tree in Italy the question remains how the 21st-century house down the street got its 13th-century decoration? The answer is that great cultural magpie, the US. As part of a thriving street decoration tradition in middle America large presipios now jostle with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in department stores.
  
  It’s a long way around, but who knows? Australian households, wary of real trees and troubled by lack of space in modern flats, may just start making the 21st century switch to the 13th.
  
  Dennis Shanahan is the political editor of The Australian.

≪A proposito di Natale, io e il barone abbiamo cominciato a fare il presepe come tutti gli anni e ci sono voluti due giorni solo per aprire tutte le scatole dei pastori, levare la polvere ed incollare con la colla di pesce braccia e gambe spezzate.≫

≪Il presepe≫ dice il professore ≪per noi napoletani è una cosa veramente importante, lei ingegnere scusi preferisce il presepe o l’albero di Natale?≫

≪Il presepe, ovviamente.≫

≪E ne sono contento per lei≫ mi dice il professore stringendomi la mano. ≪Veda, gli esseri umani si dividono in presepisti ed alberisti e questa è una conseguenza della suddivisione del mondo in mondo d’amore e mondo di libertà ma questo è un discorso lungo che potremo fare un’altra volta, oggi invece vi vorrei parlare del presepe e dei presepisti≫

≪Forza professò ≫ dice Salvatore. ≪Parlateci del presepe che qua stanno i ragazzi vostri!≫

≪Dunque , come vi dicevo, la suddivisione in presepisti ed alberisti è tanto importante che, secondo me, dovrebbe comparire sui documenti d’identità come il sesso ed il gruppo sanguigno. E già per forza, perché altrimenti un povero dio rischierebbe di scoprire solo a matrimonio avvenuto di essersi unito con un cristiano di tendenze natalizie diverse. Adesso sembra che io esageri, eppure è così: l’alberista si serve per vivere di una scala di valori completamente diversa da quella del presepista. Il primo tiene in gran conto la Forma, il Denaro e il Potere; il secondo invece pone ai primi posti l’Amore e la Poesia.≫

≪Noi qua in questa casa≫ dice Saverio, ≪siamo tutti presepisti, è vero professò?≫

≪No, non tutti. Mia moglie e mia figlia, ad esempio, come quasi tutte le donne, sono alberiste.≫

≪Ad Assuntina piace l’albero di Natale≫ dice sottovoce Saverio.

≪Tra le due categorie non ci può essere colloquio, uno parla e l’altro non capisce. La moglie vede che il marito fa il presepe e dice: “Ma perché invece di appuzzolentire tutta casa con la colla di pesce, il presepe non lo vai a comprare già bello e fatto all’UPIM?”. Il marito non risponde. E già perché all’UPIM si può comprare l’albero di Natale che è bello solo quando è finito e quando si possono accendere le luci, il presepe invece no, il presepe è bello quando lo fai o addirittura quando lo pensi: “Adesso viene Natale e facciamo il presepe. Quelli a cui piace l’albero di Natale sono solo dei consumisti, il presepista invece, bravo o non bravo, diventa creatore ed il suo vangelo è “Natale in casa Cupiello”.≫

≪Io l’ho visto professò e mi ricordo di quando Eduardo dice: “Il presebbio l’ho fatto tutto da solo e contrastato dalla famiglia”.≫

≪I pastori≫ continua Bellavista. ≪Debbono essere quelli di creta, fatti a mano, un poco brutti e soprattutto nati a San Gregorio Armeno, nel cuore di Napoli, e non quelli di plastica che si vendono all’UPIM, e che sembrano finti; i pastori debbono essere quelli degli anni precedenti e non fa niente se sono quasi tutti un poco scassati, l’importante è che il capofamiglia li conosca per nome uno per uno, e sappia raccontare per ogni pastore nu bello fattariello (un bel aneddoto): “Questo è Benito che non teneva voglia (aveva voglia) di lavorare e che dormiva sempre; questo è il padre di Benito che pascolava le pecore sopra alla montagna; e questo è il pastore della meraviglia” e a mano a mano che i pastori escono dalla scatola, c’è la presentazione. Il padre presenta i pastori ai figli più piccoli, che così ogni anno, quando viene Natale, li possono riconoscere e li possono voler bene come a persone di famiglia. Personaggi della vita, anche se storicamente inaccettabili come ‘O monaco (il monaco)  e ‘O cacciatore c’o fucile (il cacciatore col fucile).≫

≪Professò, po’ ce sta (poi c'è) ‘o cuoco (il cuoco), ‘a tavulella cu’ e’ ddoie coppie assettate (la tavola con le due coppie sedute), ‘o mellunaro (il venditore di cocomeri), o’ verdummaro (il venditore di verdura), chille ca venne ‘e castagne (quello che vende le castagne), ‘o canteniere (il vinaio), ‘o chianchiere (il macellaio).≫

≪Ebbè,≫ dice Salvatore «pure a quell’epoca si doveva faticare fino a notte tarda per poter campare.≫

≪E poi ci sta ‘a lavannara (la lavandaia),≫ continua Saverio ≪‘o pastore che porta ‘e pullastre (il personaggio che porta i polli [a Napoli, per pastore s'intende qualsiasi statuina del presepe eccetto la Sacra Famiglia, gli angeli, i Re magi, e le figurine di animali]), ‘o piscatore che pesca overamente (il pescatore che pesca per davvero) nell’acqua vera che scende da dentro all’enteroclisma (in inglese: enema) messo dietro al presepe.≫

≪Papà mio,≫ dice Luigino, ≪quelli un poco scassati li riusciva sempre a mettere in maniera tale che poi nessuno si accorgeva se tenevano un braccio o una gamba di meno; mi diceva: “Luigì, adesso papà trova una posizione strategica per questo povero pastoriello che ha perduto una coscia”, e lo piazzava dietro a una siepe o dietro a un muretto, e poi mi ricordo che avevamo un pastore che ogni anno si perdeva qualche pezzo, tanto che alla fine ci rimase solo la testa e papà la piazzò dietro a una finestrella di una casetta. Papà le casette le faceva con le scatole delle medicine e poi dentro ci metteva la luce, e quando, durante l’anno, io mi dovevo prendere una medicina, per esempio uno sciroppo che non mi piaceva, allora lui prendeva lo scatolino e mi diceva: “Luigì, questo scatolo ce lo conserviamo per quando viene Natale, che cosi ne facciamo una bella casetta per il presepio, tu però bell’ 'e papà (bello di papà) devi finire prima la medicina che ci sta dentro, se no papà la casarella (la casetta) come la fa?”≫

≪E poi, quando veniva la mezzanotte,≫ continua Salvatore ≪ci mettevamo tutti in processione e giravamo per tutta la casa cantando “Tu scendi dalle stelle”. Il più piccolo della famiglia avanti con il bambino Gesù, e tutti quanti dietro con una candela accesa tra le mani.≫

≪O’ presepe (il presepe)! L’addore d’a colla ‘e pesce (l'odore della colla di pesce), ‘o suvero  pe fa ‘e muntagne (il sughero per fare le montagne), ‘a farina pe fa ‘a neve… (la farina per fare la neve...)≫ 

panettóne s. m. [adattam. del milan. panattón, der. di pane]:

Tipico dolce milanese, a forma di cupola, la cui lavorazione comporta due impasti, il primo, alla sera, fatto con farina, lievito, burro e zucchero, il secondo, al mattino seguente, fatto con farina, burro, zucchero, sale, cedro, uva sultanina e tuorli d’uovo, che vengono incorporati nella pasta già lievitata, ottenendo così un nuovo impasto che, collocato in stampi cilindrici, è cotto in forno; attribuito dalla leggenda alla corte viscontea del ’300, ma probabilmente di origine più antica, è tradizionale in tutta Italia come dolce natalizio. 

Italian food conservatism expressed itself in other ways. One of the most influential was nostalgia. In the very years when they were taking their first steps as consumers, Italians also discovered that the authentic ingredients and dishes of days gone by were an endangered treasure. Just as hunger was disappearing from the peninsula, Italians were told that good food was a thing of the past. 

One of the most captivating early expressions of Italian food nostalgia was a series filmed during the year, 1957, that advertising first appeared on Italian television. The twelve episodes of In Search of Genuine Foods. A Journey along the Po Valley were a major undertaking for Italy's RAI TV, which itself had only been in operation for three years: the camera and sound crew was fifteen-strong, and they travelled in a six-vehicle convoy that included a lorry and a minibus. In Search of Genuine Foods was made and presented by Mario Soldati. Apart from being a novelist, screenwriter and film-maker, he was also Italy's most eloquent 'wandering glutton' in the tradition established during the Fascist era by the Touring Club Italiano and Paolo Monelli. Soldati's idiosyncratic and opinionated style is stamped all over his programme. He looked like a movie director who had hired himself from Central Casting - beret, tortoiseshell glasses, neat little moustache, sports jacket, and an eyepiece worn round the neck. He showed himself standing up in his jeep at the head of the convoy, and ordering his film crew around with peremptory blasts on a whistle. His interviewing style involved rarely allowing anyone else to finish a sentence. It all made for superb entertainment, and a remarkable document of the changing face of Italian food. 

Soldati's aim was to seek out what he called 'genuine gastronomy'. Some of his programme's earliest sequences, shot in his home region of Piedmont, show most clearly what he had in mind. By a mountain torrent below the snowy, pyramid-shaped peak of Mount Monviso close to the source of the Po, Soldati films a man fishing with a rod and line for trout no longer than his hand. Down in the plain near Chieri, he interviews a peasant about the cardoons he grows; after being buried to their tips for eight days to acquire the right pallor, they are sent just up the road to Turin where they are dipped in bagna cauda, the city's warm garlic and anchovy sauce. In the seventeenth-century town of Chierasco, Soldati examines the local 'horse-rump bullocks', which are fed a special diet, including eggs, to accentuate the distinctive shape and taste of their haunches. In Turin itself, Soldati sees grissini breadsticks made by hand, and visits one of Italy's oldest and grandest restaurants, just across from the building that accommodated the country's first parliament. Back in the studio, he introduces a countess in twin-set and pearls who demonstrates how to make a fondue topped with truffle shavings, and explains that 'social tragedy' is the fate of any housewife who serves her guests a fondue that is stringy rather than creamy. This was an image of Italian eating that could easily have been painted a century earlier. 

But perhaps the most telling moment in Soldati's journey is when he finds himself amid the huge steel tubes, enamelled vats and gleaming domed inspection hatches of a giant cheese factory near Lodi, south-east of Milan. Here the boss is not a landowner but an entrepreneur in a double-breasted suit, and his key employees wear white coats and spend their time taking readings from gauges. The milk comes from cows reared on concentrated soya-based feeds from Japan. Looking around him, Soldati removes his beret and gives his head a demonstratively downhearted scratch. Then, talking direct to camera in a resigned tone, he concedes that there is no other way adequately to feed the masses: 'The great majority of what we eat is industrialised. So if I had had to limit my search for what is genuine only to things that are artisanal, hand-made and traditional, I would have ended up showing you, the viewers, a gastronomy that would be out of reach in most cases. Unless you wanted to die of hunger.' Soldati's mood picks up as the factory tour progresses. He sees large balls of provolone being shaped by hand, and perfect, house-shaped stacks of the mulberry logs that are burned to smoke the cheese. At the end of the tour, the genuine and the industrial are reconciled when Soldati takes a stroll in a warehouse where some of the factory's 50,000 Grana Padano cheeses are slowly maturing. He ends the programme at table, extolling the time-honoured virtues of Grana and Parmigiano-Reggiano, the two varieties of Parmesan. Recalling an ancient piece of Italian wisdom, he recommends that the 'king of cheeses' be eaten at the end of a meal with 'the queen of fruits', the pear. 

The curious thing about Soldati's search for genuine foods is his uncertainty. He never quite makes up his mind where to draw the line between what is genuine and what is industrial. Part of him wants to restrict 'genuine' to the man fishing for trout in the Alps. Another part of him is less wistful. Some of Italian food's most genuine traditions centre on products like cheeses, hams, salami and pasta secca: they were originally designed for preservation, transport and trade, and therefore lend themselves well to industrial methods. Telling the difference between what is genuine and what is artificial is not always as easy as choosing a plate of maccheroni over a concoction of jam, yoghurt, mustard and milk. 

Soldati's uncertainty has run through the history of Italian food since the economic miracle. Italy is still a country 'in search of genuine foods', a country permanently nostalgic for the dishes of yesteryear. What the term 'genuine' might actually mean has never been clear: it is too misted with nostalgia, too vulnerable to appropriation by advertisers. Yet 'genuine' has retained its magical aura. Despite the confusion surrounding it, a belief in what is genuine, combined with a regret for what has become industrial or artificial, has been written into the statutes of Italy's civilisation of the table: it has become an article of Italian gastronomic faith. 

Italians only take foods to their hearts that have a claim to being genuine. Or 'typical' or 'authentic' or 'traditional', which have the same vague and evocative appeal. The contemporary era is the era of national foods, dishes that, for the first time in history, have united culinary Italy from north to south, and from top to bottom of the social scale. All national foods have a sound pedigree in one or other region of the peninsula, yet all are made on an industrial scale. Panettone is one instance: the deliciously soft, light cake with candied fruit was originally a Milanese speciality. But by the time of In Search of Genuine Foods, shrewd marketing had turned it into a Christmas treat for all. One company used to present panettoni to winners in the hugely popular Giro d'Italia cycle race. Genuine Milanese panettone was already becoming an object of nostalgia - Soldati visits a pastry shop that is one of the few still making it in the original way. 

Other national dishes, like pizza and mozzarella, came from the south to conquer the north. The provolone that Soldati sees being made at the factory in Lombardy is another case in point. This melon-shaped cheese was brought up to the Po valley in the early 1900s by southern entrepreneurs in search of a more fertile commercial terrain. The factory owner tells Soldati that 70 to 80 per cent of provolone is now made in the north. 

The mass migration of the economic miracle had much to do with this nationalisation process. Southerners took their favourite foods to Turin, for example, and in time they also learned to like bagna cauda, just as the torinesi learned to like pasta with tomato sauce (although in the early years prejudiced locals sneered that 'dirty southerners' grew tomatoes in the bathtub and basil in the bidet). 

Since the 1950S, the spread of national dishes has gathered pace and, in the process, the confusion surrounding what is genuine has become ever greater. In most of Italy, there is nothing traditional about eating rocket, balsamic vinegar and buffalo-milk mozzarella. Yet these foods became national crazes in the 1980s and 1990S by selling themselves as authentic products, hallowed by the ages. (Shortly afterwards, of course, the craze swept through supermarkets in the rest of the world.) Italian food can only reinvent itself by pretending it has stayed the same. Change only comes in the guise of continuity; novelties must be presented as nostalgic relics. This food conservatism is a cultural quirk that makes for a great deal of misunderstanding and cant. But it is the Italian civilisation of the table's saving virtue in the age of mass production.

I don't know about the rest of Italy - I hear it's different in the South - but here people seem to have used up all their culinary inspiration on the savouries and have none left over for the sweet stuff. The favourite local pastry, over which our friends here go into delirium, is a thing called the crostata, a close relative of the jam tart, but rather more like the bits of leftover pastry our granny used to spread thinly with jam and bung into the bottom of the oven for us kids so it wouldn't go to waste. I daresay if this is all you're used to in the way of baked sweetmeats, panettone isn't too bad. Maybe, but we can't keep up with the steady influx of the things, and by the sixth or seventh day of Christmas the boxes of half-eaten panettone sitting about the place have begun to mount up disturbingly. Even more annoyingly, since you can't go to anyone's house without one, we keep having to go and buy more of the things into the bargain. In desperation we come up with a cunning plan: we'll recycle them. As each new one arrives, we pop it, still in its huge box, on to the shelf with its friends and relations, and offer chunks from an earlier one instead. Now we can take the unopened ones with us on our own calls, dramatically reducing the backlog and concealing our ungratefulness at a stroke. Clever. 


Or perhaps not so clever after all: we soon find out that we are not alone in thinking up this solution to the overwhelmed-by-panettone period. One of our own recycled items reappears upon our kitchen table a week later, recognizable by a bit of my scribbling on its box. We can't remember who originally gave it to us, or who we passed it on to, there being so many of the things flying about at the moment, but with the help of the shamefaced culprits Mimmo and Lorella we work out that it has visited at least four homes on its Christmas circuit without ever being opened so far: must have done, because it was given to them by someone we hardly know and can't possibly have given it to. Food for thought. Can the whole panettone business be an enormous confidence trick? Are we the only people foolish enough to actually eat the things?