From Baroque to our day

The baroque Presepio reached its highest artistic expression in the Neapolitan
Presepio, which influenced, albeit with natural regional differences, the Presepio in
Sicily, Genoa and Rome.
Apart from the persisting baroque splendor of 17th century Presepio in Naples, Sicily
and here and there in Genoa, in other regions of Italy in the 18th century the
Presepio was simpler, less spectacular and closer to the historic reality, with figures
mainly in wood, carved in South Tyrol, and in polychrome terracotta in Lombardy
and Romagna; there was also a diffusion of the mechanical Presepio a real
concession of the century of reason.

Moreover, during this century under the influence of materialism and the
rationalism of the Enlightenment, the tradition of the Presepio experienced a period
of undeniable decadence. Only in the next century Romanticism, exalting the
highest spiritual values, such as religious sentiment and sense of family and
tradition, values expressed in the highest grade in the Presepio, brought it back into
fashion although with profoundly different characteristics.
Closed for ever its great season of art, in the 19th century the Presepio, having lost
its former great numbers of devotees and consequent use in churches and patrician
homes, became simpler and spread to all the social classes, becoming a popular
tradition with an accentuation of its elements of domestic rituality.
Inexpensive figures in clay, plaster or papier-mache were produced to satisfy the
demand of an ever vaster public; artists were replaced by artisans who often used
moulds and there was a repetition of old motives, without the addition of new
original elements; moreover, in this century, the Presepio rediscovered that aspect
of ingenuous and spontaneous popular expression forgotten in the rich baroque
homes and, losing in sumptuousness, it gained in fantasy.

Connecticut based Italian Organization preserving the cultural and heritage of our
parents and grandparents. Bacio, Bridgeport Area Italian tradition in america &
Italian organization in america.