A nativity under a glass dome
An 18th-century-style presepe (Neapolitan nativity scene) inside a building from 1870, born as the villa of Prince Grifeo and today a five-star luxury hotel with an art collection spanning three centuries. When heritage meets heritage, the setting matters almost as much as the work. Between December 2024 and January 2025 we installed two works at the Grand Hotel Parker's, the oldest hotel in Naples, open for more than 150 years on Corso Vittorio Emanuele: an 18th-century nativity setting inside a display case and a Nativity scene under a glass dome, placed in the lobby of one of the landmarks of high-end Neapolitan hospitality. For anyone who knows the history of the Parker's, it is immediately clear why this collaboration matters.
The Grand Hotel Parker's
The Grand Hotel Parker's dates back to 1870, when an old villa belonging to Prince Grifeo was turned into a hotel by Guglielmo Tramontano. At the end of the 19th century it was taken over by George Parker Bidder III, an English marine biologist working at the Naples Zoological Station and a regular guest of what was then the Tramontano Beau Rivage, who bought the building and saved it from bankruptcy. In the years that followed, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde stayed there. After World War II, in 1948, the Parker's (reduced almost to a ruin) was acquired by the lawyer Francesco Paolo Avallone, and it has belonged to the Avallone family ever since.
Today it is a five-star luxury hotel overlooking the Gulf of Naples, with views of Vesuvius and Capri. It holds an art collection that spans the centuries, from the 18th century to today, and is home to George Restaurant (the first and only two-Michelin-star restaurant in Naples) and the historic Bidder Bar, a temple of the city's mixology. A place where the history of high-end Neapolitan hospitality is physically layered into the walls.
Two works, two formats
For the 2024-2025 holiday season we installed two distinct works at the Parker's. The first is an 18th-century-style Neapolitan nativity setting, arranged inside a large display case in a passageway of the hotel. In the background, architectural ruins and classical columns, a direct reference to the iconography of the 18th-century presepe; in the foreground, shepherds, women carrying baskets of provisions, a lamb, and at the center the Nativity scene. All the figures were modeled and finished by hand in our workshop, following techniques handed down for generations: the same Neapolitan craftsmanship that defines the 18th-century nativity scenes kept in the city's museums.
The second work is a glass dome protecting a smaller Nativity scene: Mary, Joseph, the Child, a lamb at their feet, an angel suspended in flight. A domestic version of the Neapolitan presepe, set on an Empire table in the lounge area of the lobby, where it enters into a visual dialogue with the damask armchairs and the chandeliers of the house.
