Florence, at Palazzo Medici Riccardi for Christmas a Nativity from the workshop of Giovanni della Robbia

In Florence, Christmas at the Medici Riccardi Palace is under the banner of Renaissance art. In fact, the Florentine institution, from December 1, 2023 to January 16, 2024, is organizing an event entitled The Nativity. Feeling and Seeing the Admirable Signum, an “exhibition cameo,” as the museum calls it, that presents to the public a glazed terracotta from Giovanni Della Robbia’s workshop depicting the Nativity and coming from the ancient sacristy of the San Francesco Convent in Fiesole. The work is on display inside the Sala del Caminetto, a room of the museum itinerary dedicated to Madonnas with Child.

The appointment is part of the calendar of celebrations for the eight centuries since the first depiction of the Nativity, which Francis of Assisi made in Greccio, a town a few kilometers from Rieti. In 1223, in fact, the patron saint of Italy stopped in the Reatine valley, probably on his way back from Rome, where he had received confirmation of his Rule from Pope Honorius III on November 29. The caves existing near Greccio reminded him of those he had seen in the Holy Land and, in particular, the setting of Bethlehem. Two weeks before Christmas, the sources tell us, Francis called a man named John and asked him to help him make his Nativity scene for December 25, in the presence of many friars and the people of Greccio. From that experience, thanks to the preaching of the Franciscans, the Nativity has spread widely among homes and squares all over the world, reaching the present day.

The glazed terracotta exhibited for the occasion at Palazzo Medici Riccardi and referring to the early sixteenth century, testifies to the artistic and devotional attention that the Della Robbia workshop reserved for the theme of the Nativity and manifests, in its dry narrative structure and contained range of colors, a special essentiality compared to the decorative, chromatic and compositional richness proper to other works by the same artist. The room in which it is exhibited holds valuable 15th- and 16th-century sculptures and paintings of Marian subjects. In ideal dialogue with Della Robbia’s work is then the Chapel of the Magi, which in the birth of Jesus finds the fulcrum of the entire depiction, still presenting on the altar the painting from the workshop of Filippo Lippi with Mary adoring, the destination of the Magi’s journey frescoed on the walls of the room.

Florence, at Palazzo Medici Riccardi for Christmas a Nativity from the workshop of Giovanni della Robbia

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