Audio tour The nativity sculpture

The nativity sculpture

The Trapani nativity scene art is represented by a vast collection of nativity scene figurines made of sculpted wood associated with canvas impregnated with plaster and glue, a technique that the Trapani sculptors also used for the creation of the famous processional groups of the "Mysteries". Among the masters who distinguished themselves in this art is Giovanni Matera from Trapani, nicknamed "lu pasturaru", active in the second half of the seventeenth century between Trapani and Palermo, who with accents of authentic lyricism was able to immortalize the daily life of the Sicilian farmers and shepherds of his time. The local nativity art is also represented by the eighteenth-century nativity scenes in alabaster, ivory and marine materials referable to workshops gravitating in the orbit of the sculptor Andrea Tipa, creations that interpret with absolute originality the rococo taste of the era. In these works, the imagination and creativity of the Trapani artisans, very skilled in combining different materials, combine with the renewed scientific-naturalistic interest in the underwater world, typical of the century of enlightenment. Among the numerous nativity scenes on display, it is worth mentioning the one in gilded copper, coral, enamel and silver, in which the Nativity scene is inserted, according to the taste of the time, within a classical architecture in ruins.