Ice Queen?
Unknown Artist
USA

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we might want to enquire as to why the beholder likes this kind of nativity set. Is he or she attracted by the wintry spell of the landscape or by the contrast between the barrenness of nature and the rosy hue that covers the newborn baby? Whatever the reason for the special attraction to this set, it points to a given period in time and its specific canon of beauty. Is it the period of Mary, the Ice Queen?

There was a time, long ago for some but not so long ago for others, when religion marked a clear difference and opposition to the things of this world. The saints, people of the other world, were accordingly pictured. Embodying the triumph over the laws of gravity and transitoriness, they were meant to look disembodied. They were, as in this set, of rarefied beauty, intentionally made to so convey the impression of diaphanous and insubstantial reality. They were heavenly – and looked it. Meanwhile, the focus of the Christian message has shifted to more this-worldliness, as other nativity scenes have shown. Today, artistic taste gives preference to a more corporeal humanness. However, the pendulum of history keeps swinging in two directions, meaning that there is – in the long run – no this-worldliness without other-worldliness. Distance and purity – as pictured in this nativity scene – have perennial value.