Lecture: “The Nativity Scene in Baroque Italy: Theater, Painting, and Sculpture”

In her lecture, Carrabino will explore the dramatic evolution of Neapolitan presepi. Inspired by the Gospels, these sculptural nativity scenes were later influenced by theatrical performances, as well as paintings by artists such as Caravaggio, who painted two altarpieces depicting the nativity during his time in Sicily. By the eighteenth century, presepi had developed into elaborate microcosms of daily life in the streets of Naples, such as that on view at the Kimbell.

       Carrabino is the Theodore Rousseau curatorial research assistant, Harvard Art Museum, Department of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has worked in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Courtald Institute of Art, London.

This free lecture is offered in conjunction with the exhibition A Nativity from Naples: Presepe Sculpture of the Eighteenth Century, on view through January 25.