From November 30, 2023 to February 6, 2024 it will be possible to admire the exhibition Contemplating Christmas in the Crypt of San Sepolcro. Dioramas from the collection of the Dalmine Nativity Scene Museum(Bergamo).
The dioramas are a small-scale reproduction of a nativity scene, designed and built by imagining a spectator who stands in front of a window to admire the nativity. The term diorama has Greek origins and means “to look through”, therefore to look through a glass.
A diorama nativity scene consists of a scene built in perspective, to give the illusion of a wider and deeper space enclosed in a case which, appropriately rounded and painted, also acts as a landscape background as well as a container. The beauty of dioramas lies in the use of perspective to create views and depth in the landscape, in the ability to narrate the scene with all its symbolic references and in the richness of the details.
To fully enjoy nativity scenes in dioramas there is only one recipe: taking time to stop and admire the story they tell us, letting ourselves be enraptured by the individual details: architecture, a road that moves away towards the background, a particular character, a small animal, a furnished room; all without ever losing sight of the nativity, the central theme and fulcrum of every nativity scene.
