Yvonne Di Palma’s Presepial Installation In Honor Of Peace In Her Florence Studio
By Mercedes Matos Carrara
The term Presepe or Presepio comes from the Latin praesepe or manger, used as the crib for baby Jesus in Bethlehem.
Constantine’s Edict of Milan (313 AD) allowed the public practice of Christianity throughout the empire and the first official churches were built then.
In fact, the celebration of Christmas on December 25 was established in 354 AD, forty-one years later.
Pope Sixtus III (432-240) built a grotto in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore to house fragments of the manger, brought to Rome from Bethlehem. Christmas Mass was celebrated in front of the relics and the church was also known as Santa Maria ad Praesepem.
The actual representation of a Presepio was started by St. Francis of Assisi in 1223, the year in which the Franciscan Order was approved by Honorius III. The pope granted him permission to celebrate Christmas in front of a real manger, flanked by an ox and a donkey, in a cave in Greccio. The chiming of bells brought both citizens and shepherds to the cave giving life to the first animated presepio. (M. Prisco, Christmas. A Society of Conflicts in Presepial Installation in Honor of Peace, pp. 9-10).
One of the earliest three-dimensional sculptural representations of the Presepio was done by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1282, for the grotto inside the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. However the most famous sculptural renditions of the Nativity are those made in 18th century Naples. They were done, not only for the churches but also for the palaces of the Neapolitan nobility at the court of the Bourbon kings Charles III and his successor Ferdinand IV, who ruled the Kingdom of Naples for Spain.
The Neapolitan Presepio introduced the crowded Inn or Tavern (Hosteria) in Bethlehem, initially based on the Gospel account (Luke 2: 7), where there was no room for the Holy Family and the Child was placed in a manger. The Nativity scene soon developed into a detailed description of life in Naples with three major scenes: the Inn with its customers and waiters; the Market with all the produce, its vendors and buyers; and the Nativity scene with the Adoration of the Magi and the Shepherds. The three-scene, ascending, pyramidal composition then rested on a rocky stage platform (scoglio), introduced by an unidentified sculptor-architect around 1752. (G. Borelli, Sanmartino scultore per il presepe napoletano, p. 12)
Yvonne DiPalma, has ingeniously related her own contemporary version of a Neapolitan 18th century presepio into her Presepial Installation in Honor of Peace. The very talented American expatriate came to Italy for the first time after getting her BA in Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. She travelled to Naples and its neighbouring towns to meet her Italian relatives. During her graduation trip she ended up meeting her late husband Michele Attanasio.
As a child, the Philadelphia-born artist had been extremely impressed by a Neapolitan presepio of small Baroque figures, shown every Christmas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The figures, with their terracotta painted heads, crystal eyes and carved wooden hands in hand-sewn outfits over their wire-supported heads and hemp bodies, had been done by Neapolitan 18th century sculptors that had specialized on the three-scene presepio.
Yvonne DiPalma, together with her husband and some of his friends decided to use the eighteenth century techniques to create a twentieth century presepio for the Paul Whistler Contemporary Art Gallery in the small town of Vico Equense in the Sorrentine Peninsula, near Sorrento, to be exhibited from December 1975 to January of 1976. Their goal was blending painting, sculpture, fashion, music, and theatre, into one work. It was the young artist’s occasion for Installation Art, the interdisciplinary form adopted by a group of Italian artists (Merz, Pascali, Paolini, Pistoletto and Fabro), who exhibited their work at the Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa in 1967, under the name of Arte Povera or Poor Art. They all searched for methods of representation and symbolic association, through metaphor and enduring visual archetypes. (Royal Academy of Arts, London, Gallery Guide Italian Art in the 20th Century; G. Briganti, Italian Art in the Early Sixties in Italian Art in the 20th Century, p. 306.)
The tradition of constructing a presepio was still strong at Vico Equense and some of Michele’s friends had been trained from childhood to build the proper stage setting for the figures. They had often used antique figures. Yvonne made all the figures herself “frequently utilizing the cruel process of trial and error…..what type of wood is soft enough to carve the delicate hands, but hard enough to resist transportation; what diameter of wire is best utilized to support the relatively heavy terracotta head but allow for the change in positions; what types of color and foundation should be applied to attain an expressive, lifelike lustre to the portrait without indulging in a varnished shine: how to attach the wires to the limbs in a hidden fashion: and on, and on, and on”. It takes a month for a figure to be finished in every detail. (Y. DiPalma, Past Techniques for a Modern Commentation, in Presepial Installation in Honour of Peace, pp. 52-53)
Yvonne DiPalma aspired to create an installation with easily recognizable political figures in perfect harmony as shepherds, inn customers, street vendors, and sophisticated characters in exotic eastern outfits, giving a message of universal peace. Initially the installation had twenty characters with President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalyn, side by side with Soviet leader Leonid Breshnev, as poor shepherd friends on their way to the manger, an allegorical happy ending to the cold war between the United States and the United Soviet Socialist Republics!
The artist and her husband moved to Florence in 1979 where she got her Master of Fine Arts at Villa Schifanoia in Florence in 1980. From this moment on, the painted scenery for each presepial installation is dotted with Medici crests and fountains that set the scene in Florence. Renaissance perspective devices lead the viewer to the Nativity scene, such as the carpet in Fra Angelico’s San Marco Altarpiece or Botticelli’s self-portrait facing the viewer and leading to the Holy Family in his Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi.
Scenery and characters change, depending on the particular political situation of that year. The stage has seen Prince Charles and Diana (1979-80), Iran’s fundamentalist leader Khomeini, Shah Reza Pahlevi, and Gorbaciov (1981-82). The Rome presepial installation of 1983- 84 was the most acclaimed one with TV coverage and numerous articles. The artist almost foresaw the end of the Cold War and the destruction of the Berlin wall. President Ronald Reagan shakes hands with Russian leader Andropov as Italian President Sandro Pertini, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Nancy Reagan watch (conversation with Yvonne DiPalma).
The next two installations (1990-91, 1991-92) were done in Florence in the Church of San Jacopo Soprarno and the Galleria il Punto. A sense of optimism and a hope for universal peace was prevalent in both. Popes John XXIII and John Paul II made their appearance. In the painted scenery the artist painted Bernardo Buontalenti’s Fontana dello Sprone of 1608, in the corner between Via dello Sprone and Borgo San Jacopo, next to San Jacopo Soprarno, seat of the installation.
From December to January 1992-93 Yvonne DiPalma and her presepial installation were guests of the Maurizio Costanzo show in the Parioli Theater in Rome. The television setting was constructed “on wheels and rolled on stage every night for a month with the Tavern Scene of the major politicians happily eating at the same table”( Conversation with Yvonne DiPalma)
The two showings in the Basilica of Santa Croce (1999-2000, 2001-2002) reflected the war in Yugoslavia with portraits of Milosevic and his wife, George W. Bush and his wife Laura, the continual unbalance in the Middle East, an underlying fear of terrorism…. September 11 took place nine months later (conversation with Yvonne DiPalma).
Finally, in 2006, the presepial installation found a new home in the artist’s studio on Via San Zanobi 52/r. She painted the scene of the Unknown (fig. 2) on a canvas over the right wall in the first version of 2006-07. The endless series of arches recall De Chirico’s Metaphysical Paintings. For the artist “this was a very important addition; it resolved the empty space to the right with a very Italian kind of image which has always impressed me when I walk into a cloister, that is the perspective of one archway under another under another... At the end is a small door, one cannot tell whether it is open or closed- it’s just black. This was the perfect place to put the balance/ and /or threat of nuclear power in the hands of Ahmadinejad of Iran and Kim Jong Il of Korea. What future do we have if that cheese drops?? Superficially, they are just bringing a cheese over to the Market Scene. This is still a very important problem today so I haven't changed them since then. ”
The 2008-09 Tavern Scene (fig. 2) shows President George W. Bush and his wife Laura at the table with Nicolas Sarkosy and Silvio Berlusconi. Barak Obama is standing in the middle dressed as a shepherd, filled with excitement and hope as the next President of the United States. Libya’s Ghedaffi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Italian President Napolitano are all approaching the table. Condolezza Rice appears on the right carrying an object, eyes raised to heaven “attempting her last peace policies before her term ends.” (Yvonne DiPalma) Bin Laden is seated in the foreground wrapped in his own thoughts, totally oblivious of the people gathered in the tavern.
A visit to the artist’s studio on Via San Zanobi 52/r (Associazione Culturale YDIALEGI), with its installation of over two hundred figures and animals is an unforgettable experience. The exhibit is free. For information to confirm the visit contact Giuseppe Attanasio cell. 3926373643. Yvonne also teaches sculpture and printmaking in her studio to Gonzaga University in Florence students. One can see the various steps in the process of making the figures for the Presepe. Her son Giuseppe now assists her in the carving of hands and feet, just like her late husband Michele had done when they began the Presepial Installation thirty years ago in Vico Equense.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Borelli, Gennaro. Sanmartino, scultore per il presepe napoletano. Naples: Fausto Fiorentino
Editore, 1966.
Briganti, Giuliano. Italian Art in the Early Sixties in Italian Art in the 20th Century. Munich:
Prestel-Verlag, 1989.
DiPalma, Yvonne. Past Techniques for a Modern Commentation in Presepial Instrallation in
Honor of Peace. Florence: Ponte alle Grazie, 1991.
Prisco, Michele. Christmas, a Society of Conflicts in Presepial Installation, 1991.
Lifestyle, Arts and Entertainment - a9.01.07.19.20
By Mercedes Matos Carrara