King's Crib on display at Genoa's Royal Palace after lengthy restoration

From Nov. 29, 2019, to Feb. 2, 2020, the Royal Palace of Genoa will offer the exhibition The King’s Crib, at which, following the conclusion of the long and delicate restoration, the entire complex of the monumental Royal Crib or Savoy Crib, consisting of more than eighty figures, will be on display.

Commissioned by the House of Savoy from the Genoese artist Giovanni Battista Garaventa in the first quarter of the 19th century, the crib testifies to the author’s mastery of a cultured and refined language in the vein of the best Maraglianesque tradition.
Scholars have assumed a probable Savoy commission dating back to the years following the annexation of the Ligurian territories to the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1814 and in any case within the first quarter of the 19th century.

Belonging at least in the late 19th century to the Turin church of San Filippo Neri, it is unclear whether it was conceived for that location or for a royal residence, since little data is still available on the origin of the Garaventa Crib.

This consists of figures between 40 and 70 centimeters tall, mostly carved wooden mannequins and costumes of extraordinary quality and richness. The Holy Family forms the core, along with the angels, three Magi, armigers and soldiers. Each figurine is embellished with elegant and elaborate costumes made of silk, cotton, velvet, and denim cloth. The costumes also feature silver and gold thread trimmings, leather and silver metal bodices and armor. In addition, sophisticated accessories, such as crowns and sabers, spears and shields made of embossed metal, leather chains and belts, indicate a patron of the highest rank and with conspicuous financial means.

Sold in the early twentieth century and passed from property to property, it is the fruit of that long tradition of nativity scenes and wooden plastics of which Anton Maria Maragliano was the greatest exponent.
It was not until 1993 that the executive authorship was traced back to Garaventa, an artist of academic training who was active mainly as a carver of processional chests and sacred images, as a restorer of ancient sculptures, and as a modeler of decorative and ephemeral apparatus.

The exhibition of the King’s Nativity in theAnticamera del Duca di Genova, specially reopened to the public along with the entire Apartment, turns the spotlight back, after last year’s exhibition dedicated to Anton Maria Maragliano, on a still little-known chapter of post-Maragliano wooden sculpture production, offering the public a work from the great Genoese nativity tradition.

Hours: Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday from 1:30 to 7 p.m.

King's Crib on display at Genoa's Royal Palace after lengthy restoration

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