Figure for a Nativity Crib

The genuine, sincere inspiration of Sammartino, an artist entirely responsive to popular humors, realistic, witty, sanguine, and subtle, must have come from a quite different milieu. On the one hand there was the Neapolitan puppet tradition, an inexhaustible theatrical vein nourished in southern Italy by Spanish customs; on the other the Neapolitan peasant transformation of sacred or historical fact which served the common people's wish for concreteness and truth. These were the natural foundations for Sammartino's fresh inventions even in his "minor" works (as his crèche figures have unjustifiably been called), at least when not overwhelmed by the contributions of his collaborators.