The Museo Diocesano, here in Milan, at the heart of Christian Europe, is hosting an extraordinary exhibition of religious art that will remain open until March 2003, entitled “Il divino infante” (The Divine Infant).
On display are some one hundred sculptures of the infant Jesus from the Hiky Mayr Hinterkircher collection, ranging from the XVII to the XIX centuries, and representing the Holy Child through different art techniques, styles and materials.
The statues do not belong to sets used for traditional Christmas cribs, since they are 60-90 centimetres tall (the standing figures) or 50-70 centimetres long (the reclining ones). The statues show a child in various postures, standing or sitting, naked or in its swaddling clothes, representing the “Little King” who came to save mankind and the world, as small as he is great, since he is the son of God.

The statues of the Little King, which are provided with splendid accoutrements and magnificent garments, are made of carved polychrome wood, wax, terracotta or papier-maché, or of skilfully matched combinations of materials.
The majority of these works come from well-known artisan workshops, especially from Naples and Sicily. Besides being a display of devotional figures, the exhibition attempts a stylistic analysis of works that as yet have been only partly studied, while also investigating theological, biblical and liturgical issues that are in some way connected with the Christ Child. We art historians have often wondered, before entering into more technical or stylistic considerations, what motivations lie behind the representation of the Holy Child; in this case, based on the subject of incarnation as accepted by the Latin Church, the Italian-born St. Anselm of Canterbury was, in the eleventh century, one of the first Latin theologians to discuss circumcision.
Furthermore, considerations on the Holy Innocence, which in art includes the Infant’s naked body, are at the basis of representations that move with no difficulty from the transparent shirts of Roman paintings to nakedness viewed in the mystery of Incarnation, a theme that also appears in fifteenth-century paintings of the Virgin Mary, either in connection with the Annunciation or with the debate on the Immaculate Conception. Actually there is no certainty as to when the Child was initially taken as a subject for sculpture – the prototype is considered by many to be the Bambino dell’Aracoeli, which dates back to the 1220s. The Child is completely swathed, except for its right hand, raised in the blessing gesture; rich clothes and a crown are applied only on special liturgical occasions.
Another prototype, this one naked, belongs to the fourteenth century and is largely present, for example, in and around Germany.
The Holy Child was especially worshipped in homes and in monasteries, and especially, as tradition has it, in female convents, as exemplified by the Convento de las Descalzas Reales in Madrid, which was founded by the daughter of Emperor Charles V and belongs to the Franciscan Order of Poor Clares. Between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries the cult of the Holy Child became widespread, especially because of the efforts of the new religious orders of the Jesuits, the Theatines and the Piarists. Actually, what artefacts we have show that, with rare exceptions, production was not based on artistic pursuits alone, establishing itself on the borderline between handicraft and art, and tightly linked to the development of religious devotion and aesthetic preferences.
The exhibition is no less fascinating for this – indeed, we might say that it is unique of its kind, for the variety and the abundance of figures displayed and values perceived. In one large section of the exhibition nine cabinets are dedicated to the themes of nudity and the clothing of the statues. Jesus’ kingly nature is highlighted by the rich fabrics, the beautiful crowns and the long wigs. The heads and the hands of the figures are carved, while the bodies consist of rigid cores covered with drapes.
The “Infants of Heaven” are set in garden scenes, where the just are admitted after their mortal life. The “Infants of Passion” forebode the passion and death of Christ. Then we have the “Reclining Infants and Infants in Swaddling Clothes”, among which a polychrome wooden figure that belonged to Margaret Ebner, the Dominican mystic who lived in a convent close to Dillinger, in Bavaria. The “Infants in Glass Cabinets” are also interesting, and seem precious souvenirs. The Infant Mary is celebrated as well: this cult originated in the East and then extended to Rome, where it was included in the Roman liturgy during the seventh century. Veneration for the Virgin Mary is deeply rooted in northern Italy since the tenth century, and particularly in Milan, at the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. The iconography concerning the Infant Mary can be traced to the Franciscan nun Chiara Isabella Fornari, from Todi, who between 1720 and 1730 is said to have crafted wax figurines of the Mary as a child, of which some were preserved by the Capuchins at Santa Maria degli Angeli and a prototype is in the Order’s mother house since 1876.
The statues on display are truly captivating, with their rounded shapes, pink skin, rosy cheeks, knees and elbows, slightly parted lips, and their arms open and reaching out. The eyes are made of glass, wigs are used for the hair, and styles and details vary according to the social class of the worshippers. The independent cult of the infant was eventually contextualised in the Christmas crib. The first that we know about was made in Prague in 1560, while in Rome the rules for laying out the crib were set down by the Piarists. Over the centuries, artists and artisans made a cult of the Divine Infant, but in so doing they made an article for collectors.

Translated by Interpres sas