Credito Valtellinese Foundation is going to celebrate the last Christmas of this millennium with a large exhibition featuring the evolution of the crib tradition in the world. The exhibition will be mounted in Credito Valtellinese Gallery in Palazzo Sertoli and in Palazzo Pretorio, in Sondrio, and investigates as much the habits of the economically underdeveloped areas as those of the most advanced countries.

The exhibition - which is meant to illustrate the so-called poor handicraft - aims at approaching the public again to the primitive symbolic meaning of the crib, whose origin is still a much-debated question. To date, in fact, there are two theses. One attributes the first living crib to Saint Francis from Assisi, who prepared it in Greccio, near Rieti; the other one attributes the "prototype" to Arnolfo di Cambio, who sculptured eight marvellous marble statues portraying Virgin Mary with her Child, Saint Joseph, the ox and donkey and the Magi, in accordance with the iconography which has become classical.

The exhibition hosts a hundred cribs from everywhere around the world: from China to Brazil, from Austria to Chile, from Mexico to Spain, Poland and Guatemala. They are realized with various sorts of materials, which often form amazing, original and elegant combinations: e.g. terracotta and crystal; paper-pulp and silver; ivory and wood; ceramic and bronze; glass and plaster; egg shell and nutshell; banana tree leaves, so that they make the question whether such handmade articles belong to the aesthetic category of the work of art or not vain.

The repetitiveness of the composition scheme - which is essentially unchanged - is amazing. The only slight variations concern the portrayed characters and the hierarchy, which clearly indicate social habits, folk traditions or religious observances that are very different from one country to another.

In the same way, the materials that are used differ even in neighbouring areas.

Think, as an example, about the differences existing, in Italy, between Sicilian cribs and Neapolitan cribs.

Such differences are very familiar to the connoisseurs of this genre - which reached the peak of its splendour in the XVIII century under Charles III of Borbone. Or think even about the differences existing between Savona cribs and Genoa cribs, in Liguria.

The crib, in short, is the indicator of the history of a civilization. So, the Genoa crib changed its features and materials after the ancient dominant class was brought down by the French Revolution. The wood replaced the terracotta and a purely industrial production was replaced with a plain "homely" production.

For further information:Credito Valtellinese Gallery, Phone 0342/522738
Email: creval@creval.it