Every year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, there is a display of an 18th century Neapolitan nativity scene. It is the familiar scene – shepherds roused from sleep, an angelic choir, exotic wise men from the East, Joseph and Mary – figures made of wood, clay, and paint.
What is surprising about this scene – unexpected and easily missed by the causal observer – is that the stable, shepherds, and the cradle are set, not in the small town of Bethlehem but among the ruins of mighty Roman columns. The fragile manger is surrounded by broken and decaying columns.
Someone has said of this scene that the artists knew the meaning of this nativity event: The gospel, the birth of God’s new age, was also the death of the old world.
Picture can be found at www.flickr.com by searching for the words: Metropolitan Museum of Art nativity
Andrew Groves 