Francesco Londonio and the Paper Nativity Scenes at the Diocesan Museum of Milan

The history of paper nativities through graphics and paintings by Francesco Londonio (Milan, 1723-1783) are the focus of the exhibition Francesco Londonio and the Tradition of Paper Nativities, curated by Alessia Alberti conservator of the Gabinetto dei Disegni e Raccolta delle Stampe “A. Bertarelli” of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan and Alessia Devitini, curator of the Museo Diocesano in Milan. For the first time after restoration, the Gernetto Nativity, a masterpiece by the Lombard painter, will be exhibited. Running from Dec. 1, 2023 to Jan. 28, 2024 at the Carlo Maria Martini Diocesan Museum in Milan, the exhibition celebrates a double anniversary, namely theeighth centenary of the first representation of the Nativity, which took place by St. Francis at Greccio in 1223, and the third centenary of the birth of Francesco Londonio, a Milanese painter and engraver almost exclusively associated with bucolic and pastoral themes and author of the Gernetto Nativity, one of the masterpieces of that particular type, preserved precisely at the Diocesan Museum in Milan.

The exhibition, which includes about forty works in addition to the nativity scene from the Diocesan Museum’s collection, is organized in collaboration with the Graphic and Art Collections of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, under the patronage of the Lombardy Region, sponsors Comieco, Ispe, and the Lombardy Councilmen’s Association.

The exhibition begins with a nucleus of works by Francesco Londonio, an example of his pictorial and graphic activity entirely dedicated to the pastoral world: paintings, studies and drawings have been selected from the Pinacoteca and the Gabinetto dei Disegni (Drawings Cabinet) of the Castello Sforzesco, illustrating themes and motifs of the “formula” that reflects the artist’s typical vision of the world, suspended between Arcadia and the Enlightenment; from here his production of paper nativities ’naturally’ springs. A comparison of this nucleus with the Gernetto Nativity in the Diocesan Museum allows us to understand how his activity related to nativity scenes is not a mere pastime but is considered by him to be on a par with his more committed production. Also exhibited in this section are a series of etchings all centered on the rural world and intended for Count Giacomo Mellerio, commissioner of the Gernetto Nativity.

It was precisely from the earliest examples made by Francesco Londonio that paper nativities spread in Lombardy, and from his models that a tradition of cutout nativities began, documented by the works in the Civica Raccolta delle Stampe Achille Bertarelli, which confirm their enduring fortune, from the 18th century to the early 20th century. The oldest specimens, etched and colored by hand, date back to Londonio’s time and are related to the production of the Remondini publishers. Also on display is a series of greeting cards and pop-up cards from various eras, in which cribs and paper remain the protagonists.

The initiative is rounded off with the large display case housing the Gernetto Nativity, which is on display for the first time fully restored. The work, which owes its name to the Gernetto villa in Lesmo, Brianza, for which it was made, probably commissioned by Count Giacomo Mellerio around the 1860s-1970s, consists of about 60 figures - including the Holy Family with the Magi, shepherds, pages, children, peasants and animals - painted in tempera on shaped paper and cardboard.

Accompanying the exhibition is the Catalog published by Dario Cimorelli Editore.

Educational Activities Calendar The exhibition dedicated to paper nativities, starting with the “grand theater” of Francesco Londonio up to the present day, together with the display of Beato Angelico’s work, will be an opportunity to enter the tradition of Christmas storytelling and more specifically the nativity scene, discovering its most ephemeral and at the same time most fascinating form. NARRATED VISITS curated by Educational Services Thursday, Dec. 7, 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16, 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 27, 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 14, 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 21, 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 28, 3.30 Cost: €10 + Museum admission fee, to be purchased on site, according to each person’s reductions; LABORATORY VISITS by Educational Services CHILDREN Friday, January 5, 3:30 p.m. Cost: €8 + Museum admission fee, to be purchased on site, €7 per child ADULTS Saturday, December 9, 10 a.m.30 Saturday, Dec. 16, 10:30 a.m. Cost: €15 + paid Museum entrance fee, to be purchased on site, according to each person’s reductions; SPECIAL LUNCH BREAK: FREE VISITS by Management Tuesday, Dec. 5, 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 19, 1:00 p.m.30 (Reserved for holders of Abbonamento Musei Lombardia) Museum entrance fee, to be purchased on site, according to the reductions of each Calendar being updated / For all activities compulsory reservation on Eventbrite

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Statements

“This exhibition allows the Diocesan Museum to give visibility to two of its main tasks: the preservation and enhancement of its collections, thus allowing,” says Monsignor LUCA BRESSAN President of the Sant’Ambrogio Foundation for Christian Culture, “to continue their generative chain of good and wonder. It starts from the good of those who allowed the setting up and the exhibition, it crosses the good of those who made the gift of those works to the museum, to reach the good of those who created those works, and there is no stopping here. If there had not been the mystery of Christmas, the mystery of a God who out of our love becomes one of us, how could artists have told us about this mystery?”

“This exhibition,” says Tommaso Sacchi Councillor for Culture of the City of Milan, “celebrates the link between the artistic genius of Francesco Londonio and the centuries-old tradition of paper nativity scenes in Lombardy, proving to be a fine opportunity to discover the art and culture of a bygone era through the eyes of a master of paper painting and nativity scenes that have fascinated generations of the faithful and art lovers.”

“Paper and nativities-particularly Londonio’s and the entire exhibition that this catalog has the pleasure of recounting,” says Carlo Montalbetti Director General of Comieco (National Consortium for the Recovery and Recycling of Cellulose-Based Packaging), “are linked by a relationship rich in similarities: both are born from the hands of skilled artists and craftsmen, and both are proposed as something destined to last, never the same in form yet unchanged in substance. Then, when paper becomes the raw material used by the artist to create a nativity scene, as with the exhibition this catalog accounts for, content and container merge into a unicum of extraordinary artistic and evocative power.”

“The beginning of a large-scale spread of the tradition of paper nativity scenes in Lombardy,” writes exhibition curator Alessia Alberti in the catalog, “is a phenomenon that chronologically tends to be placed in the second half of the 18th century, in relation on the one hand to the success of inventions related to the pastoral genre by the painter Francesco Londonio, who in Milan (and beyond) was working at that time on commissions from the most important families of the city’s nobility, and on the other hand with the activity of established chalcographers such as Giulio Cesare Bianchi, who towards the end of the century produced substantial and valuable series of sheets of etched figures, to be printed, colored and cut out for the creation of domestic nativity scenes. This evidently successful publishing line continued into the next century with the Vallardi, expanding and naturally adapting to new technological discoveries, foremost among them the lithographic printing process, until it lapped the 20th century, with the experience of serial production, on light paper and using lithographic and typographic techniques, of the National Factory of Images, inspired by the French model of the Imagerie d’Épinal. From the extremely rich graphic collections of the Castello Sforzesco, among the largest in Europe and in the world, with an estimated heritage of more than a million printed images for the ”Achille Bertarelli“ Collection of Prints alone, arises the path of this exhibition, which without claiming to be exhaustive, but through selected examples identified in the different sections, illustrates executive techniques and areas of production, even beyond the Lombard and national borders, verifying the genre’s hold until the early 1970s, when the Milanese civic collections were enriched by the important donation of a professor from Trieste, Ettore Tonini, particularly rich in examples in this sense.”

“The crib known as the Gernetto crib,” writes curator Alessia Devitini in the catalog, “the work of the Milanese Francesco Londonio (1723-1783) and entered the permanent collection of the Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini in 2018, is an acquisition of great importance not only for the uniqueness of this nativity scene, consisting of about sixty painted cardboard silhouettes, probably the last eighteenth-century Lombard specimen to have arrived almost intact to the present day, but also because for a long time in the museum’s permanent collection, although it may seem unusual, since it is a museum of sacred art, no subject closely related to the Nativity was included. After an initial presentation to the city took place in 2018 at Palazzo Pirelli, starting in 2021, the year of the museum’s 20th anniversary, to celebrate the Holy Christmas, the nativity scene will be set up every year in a dedicated room.”

Francesco Londonio and the Paper Nativity Scenes at the Diocesan Museum of Milan

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