If you’ve been lucky enough to visit New York City during the Christmas season, you may have nipped into the Metropolitan Museum for the express pleasure of seeing the Angel Tree, an exquisite baroque nativity scene from eighteenth century Naples, which is displayed annually in the Medieval Sculpture Hall. Standing in front of the magnificent Spanish choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid, the giant spruce is adorned with a host of silk-robed angels and cherubs who ascend and alight upon the holy family.
These crèche figures, as religious statuettes of this style are called, were donated to the museum in 1964 by Loretta Hines Howard, a lumber heiress and a painter in her own right. She was a student of Robert Henri, pioneer of the Ashcan School of American Realism.
Hines Howard began collecting in 1925 when she received a set of figurines of the Holy Family as a wedding gift from her mother. By the time of her death in 1982, she had more than 200 pieces. Made in Naples by the atelier of Giuseppe Sammartino (1720-1793), no two figures are alike. Each head is in finely painted terracotta and has a different face and expression. Legs, arms, and wings are carved from wood and the bodies of hemp and wire, all of which can be moved to various positions. They wear different outfits and carry objects specific to their work or trade. Besides people, there are animals, houses, market stalls with local fairs, and even a typical Italian fountain.
The Angel Tree is especially rare in that it combines the particularly Roman Catholic custom of creating nativity scenes with the Protestant tradition of the Christmas tree, and in so doing intertwines the two.
Another collection exists, however, which is much less known but perhaps even more magical. In 1949, Hines Howard, a devout Roman Catholic, wanting to honor the memory of her husband who had been killed playing polo, made a gift of some 70 crèche figures to a Benedictine Abbey of cloistered nuns, located in a little New England town called Bethlehem.
I was fortunate in late August, to participate in a tour of the Abbey crèche. These are some of the photos from that visit.
Screenshot
The crèche, as a visual representation of the birth of Christ, can be traced to nativity scenes on sarcophagi as early as the fourth century. The Abbey crèche is thought to have been presented to Victor Amadeus II, King of Sardinia on the occasion of his coronation in 1720. After his death in 1732, it became the property of an aristocratic Italian family and from them it went to an Italian collector, Mr. Catello, until 1948 when it was purchased and brought to America by Loretta Hines Howard and presented to the Abbey the following year. A team from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York later undertook a total conservation of the figures and their costumes.
Screenshot
Portrait of Loretta Hines Howard wearing a bright red dress (painted 1925-1929) by American artist Robert Henri (1865-1929). Henri was Howard’s teacher and one of the pioneers of the Ashcan School, arguably the most important American art movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, emphasizing the gritty realism of urban life. Howard went on to become a portrait and landscape artist in her own right. Her work was exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, among others.
3 Donkey
“Ranging in height from twelve to fifteen inches, they are quite flexible and can be bent into a variety of positions.... Their faces have a variety of exceedingly lifelike expressions, from serene half smiles on the angels’ faces to startled gapes on the shepherds. All of them are still wearing their eighteenth-century cloth costumes.” from The New Yorker Talk of the Town: Dec 1969
4 Holy family
The tradition of recreating the events at the manger is an ancient one that reached a crescendo in eighteenth century Naples. Leading artists of the day were commissioned by noble families to take nativity scenes (in Italian called Presepios) created for the churches and make smaller versions suitable for enjoyment at home.
5 Panorama
“It is said that four hundred Neapolitan churches annually set up their Presepio and many private houses too had their own ‘Bethlehem’ on which owners spent vast sums of money ..... Advent was spent in a frenzy of preparation and Christmas became a social event with people rushing from house to house, church to church, visiting, admiring, criticising each other’s Bethlehem. Often the Presepio occupied the whole floor of a house, different scenes being represented in different rooms and concerts of appropriate nativity music held in honor of any distinguished guest.” - from Angel Tree, Celebrating Christmas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Linn Howard.
6 Andrea
Looking right at home amidst the angels, Andrea Selby, Mrs. Howard’s grandaughter, grew up each Christmas season helping decorate the Angel Tree at the Met. Linn Selby, Mrs. Howard’s daughter gained stewardship of the collection after her mother’s death in 1982, and the family’s hands-on tradition of personal oversight of each detail of the arrangement of the crèche continued until 2014 when, for insurance reasons, the family was no longer permitted to touch the figures. This decision by the Museum was naturally painful for the family. “I spent my life working on that tree,” Andrea said. (photo from the family’s archive)
7 M. Angèle & visitors
“I am very devoted to the care of our Crèche,”says Mother Angèle Arbib, a nun at the Abbey who is responsible for managing the Crèche. “It is an important part of our mission of hospitality. It brings me such joy when visitors who came to the Crèche as children now bring their grandchildren.” Mother Angèle is shown here with two second-generation Abbey guests. “The representation of the nativity scene here, at a monastery, within a community of prayer, is especially powerful. I feel very blessed to be able to care for this extraordinary work of art.”
8 Whippet
The Abbey’s website reads, “This remarkable ensemble contains 68 figures between 14-16 inches high... situated in a small village made primarily of the bark of cork trees that evoke the local surrounding of the Neapolitan artists of the time. Dressed in their original 18th-century costumes, the figures vividly portray the Holy Family, as well as children, old and young women bearing gifts, merchants and peddlars, a princess and her whippet, angels, the three kings, and peasants and their farm animals.”
9 Question
“What think ye of Christ...?” A question each visitor to the Abbey Crèche is invited to consider as they view, and perhaps even connect with faces in the crowd of figures.
10 The crowd
Viewers are invited to find themselves in the crowd.
