A match made in Heaven

The highly ornate and solemn surroundings of St John's Co-Cathedral, in Valletta, will this year add aura to an intricate Neapolitan crib whose stunning artistic figures will in turn lend their appeal to Malta's most magnificent church.

The crib, a labour of love by Gozitan Fr Charles Vella, should be in place before the middle of this month and over the past few weeks he has been working frantically to make and assemble the figures.

The crib, whose reputation is growing from year to year, will have over 50 figures, double the number it had last year.

In some figures the whole body - literally warts and all - can be seen through the drapes that clothe it, such as with the image of St John the Baptist. For others Fr Vella only makes the head, hands and feet, out of terracotta. The rest is a manikin which, however, is also very laborious to make.

"The Neapolitan crib is a stage with a lot of characters, but in a way you are limited by an unwritten code of ethics. I make manikins like they used to be made 200 years ago, with cotton wound on wire strands and hemp string then tightly wrapped around the cotton wool. The head and limbs are joined to the manikin and they are then draped, using antique gold-embroidered fabric and silk," he explained.

Draping a single figure can take him the best part of a day and the priest is currently spending sleepless nights working on his figures at his house in Valletta.

But before the figure gets to that stage, it has first to be moulded from clay, left to dry, cut in two when it is half dry, hollowed out, set together again and left to dry before being baked in a kiln. The figures have to be hollow as they would otherwise explode in the kiln.

Fr Charles said Alka ceramics were kindly baking the figures for him, after which glass eyes are then fixed and the baked figures are refined with gesso and painted in washes using a mixture of oil, wax and organic varnishes.

The passion to achieve the perfect work of art is what drives Fr Charles to continue building so many highly expressive figures for his Neapolitan crib. The horn blower's vein on his neck seems about to burst. The agitated woman's hands are as evocative as her face, while the old man in a pensive mood sets you trying to guess what could be crossing his mind.

Since introducing the Neapolitan crib to Malta a few years ago, Fr Charles has never looked back. When set up, parts of the crib will shimmer and shine with ganutell, made by Anna Balzan. But the crib ensemble is the last thing on his mind at the moment, because he still has about 10 figures left which are currently a maze of heads, arms and legs... and they have to be set up within the next few days. And in addition to these, he has a heard of sheep that need to be refined and painted.

"Plenty to do but never a dull moment. St John's Co-Cathedral deserves to have the best on show, and that is what there will be," he said.