Historical Nativities of the Bolognese tradition.

From December 11, 2025 to January 11, 2026, Casa Saraceni hosts the exhibition Statuettes. Historic Nativity Scenes of the Bolognese Tradition.

On the occasion of the Christmas holidays, the collection of Nativity statuettes from the 18th–19th centuries acquired by the Fondazione Carisbo in 2007 is on display. The collection was purchased on the antiquarian market to prevent its dismantling and dispersal. The statuettes come from historic Bolognese collections, in particular those of the Baiesi family and the Zacchia-Rondinini family. They belonged to different Nativity scenes, as indicated by the variety of sizes, the differing execution techniques, and the fluctuating quality levels.
In the early twentieth century, they were the subject of critical interventions by Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri. Some were included in the celebrated exhibition on eighteenth-century Bologna curated in 1935 by Guido Zucchini and Roberto Longhi. Made of terracotta by Bolognese artists between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they are covered with vivid, brilliant polychromy. It is known that this apparently minor genre of production also involved important sculptors and modelers such as Giuseppe Maria Mazza, Angelo Piò and his son Domenico, Filippo Scandellari, and Giacomo De Maria. The latter, a pupil of Antonio Canova in Rome, is credited with the figure of the Madonna shown in profile, drawing the blessing Child toward her by encircling him with her arms.

Among the characteristic popular figures that populate the Foundation’s collection—shepherds, artisans, farmers, housewives, angels, and bagpipers, as well as farm animals and beasts of burden—distinctive figures of the Bolognese tradition can be recognized, such as the “dormiglione” (the sleeper).

The temporary exhibition of the statuettes remarkably brings back into circulation an artistic genre in which brilliant colors, Oriental exoticism, and eighteenth-century elegance combine. It features representations of the vanished trades of the ancient rural and pastoral world, brought to the fore with inexhaustible imagination.