≈ 11 min
The sieve has already done its work. In Where the raw material comes from, The material before the figure and The gesture before the fibre it was decided which materials could enter the Manual’s palette: wool, linen, goat hair, dromedary hair, leather from domestic species and, with reservations, the skins of wild fauna. That step was necessary, but it does not yet clothe a single figure.
A material may be possible and yet not be representable in a particular scene. It may be documented in the Mediterranean Levant and not belong to the ordinary wardrobe of Mary or Joseph. It may exist in the archaeological corpus and appear only as props, as an exceptional piece, as a sign of austerity or as an inner garment barely visible. The biblical nativity scene does not need to put on each character everything the sieve allowed through; it needs to decide which garment that person can wear, in that season, in that scene and with that economy.
This chapter therefore closes the stretch devoted to materials before moving on to colour. It is not a manual of sewing, weaving or tanning. It is a filter for the nativity-scene maker: of everything possible, what can become a visible garment or a representable object.
The sieve is not a wardrobe
The sieve proves existence, availability or reasoned possibility. The wardrobe demands another question. It is not enough to know that a fibre existed; one has to ask who could have it, in what form it reached their hands, how much it cost to keep, what useful life it had and whether it is visible on the surface of the figure.
The probable wardrobe of ordinary figures should not be imagined as a modern dressing room, with specific garments for each season and plenty of replacements. Ancient clothing was accumulated labour. A tunic, a mantle, a belt or a pair of sandals could be bought, commissioned, inherited, mended, cut down, adapted and reused. Poverty or modest means do not mean going naked; they mean a narrow wardrobe, few pieces and a long material life.
This bears directly on the art of the nativity scene. A warm scene does not oblige one automatically to dress the figures in linen. A cold scene does not oblige every visible garment to be thick wool. The season is resolved with layers, gestures, use, wear and economy. It is not a matter of thinking of the wardrobe as a modern dressing room with replacements for every climate, but as an inherited, narrow and reused wardrobe, within which each garment must be credible.
Wool as the axis of the ordinary wardrobe
Sheep’s wool remains the principal material of the common wardrobe. Not because every character must always wear wool, but because it brings together several factors: regional archaeological predominance, local or nearby production, a range of qualities, warmth, usefulness for tunics and mantles, relative ease in taking dye and suitability for the winter that dominates most of the Nativity cycle.
The previous chapter was developed further than the others for that reason. Wool is not a side case in the palette: it is the material that will most often allow ordinary figures to be dressed without forcing the scene. It may be coarse, medium or fine; it may be natural, dyed, worn, mended or of better quality. That breadth allows shepherds, travellers, women, men, children and characters of different condition to be dressed without turning all the fabrics into one and the same cloth.
A distinction is worth making here, one that the allocation of materials often makes invisible: fine wool is not an intermediate stage on the way to linen, but the second range of wool itself. When a scene calls for lightness, it should not be assumed that the way forward is to change fibre. A fine wool tunic may resolve temperate or warm scenes better than a linen one if the character does not own a large wardrobe or if linen would be less logical on grounds of cost, provenance or availability. Linen comes in when it brings something that fine wool cannot give; not as the default for heat.
Linen: possible, but not automatic
Linen belongs to the possible wardrobe, but its real place in the cycle is not decided by season; it is decided by three prior criteria: cost, provenance and useful life. An ordinary family does not own a garment because the temperature calls for it; it owns it if it can obtain it, keep it and replace it.
Hence the observation that orders everything else: for the principal scenes of the cycle, linen should be thought of as a material that arrives already well advanced along the chain. A family may use linen without having grown or retted it. A weaver may work linen bought or received as thread. A garment may arrive through trade, inheritance, commission or reuse. Cultivation and retting —which demand water that must not be imagined as available at no cost in Nazareth, Bethlehem or Jerusalem— belong to the study of the material, not to the figure’s wardrobe.
None of this excludes linen from the cycle: it places it. It may appear beneath another garment, at the neck or cuff, in swaddling bands, cloths, bandages or inner pieces. As a fully visible tunic, its appearance is restricted to the few warm or domestic scenes of the cycle —the Visitation, Joseph’s doubt, the first dream— and even there it is not obligatory. In an austere wardrobe, a fine wool tunic is usually more probable than a linen tunic. Linen has to earn its place in the scene; it does not come in because of the temperature.
Goat hair and dromedary hair: real material, restricted wardrobe
Goat hair and dromedary hair passed through the sieve, but that does not make them ordinary garments. Their main place is not the common wardrobe, but hard-wearing surfaces: tents, sacks, cordage, covers, objects for transport or pieces exposed to sun and water.
Goat hair may appear in the territory of haircloth, sackcloth or austerity, but it should not be used as a general solution for dressing poverty. Dromedary hair is even more marked: the Gospel reference to John the Baptist makes it a recognisable material for an ascetic figure, not a domestic fabric for Mary, Joseph or the neighbours in Nazareth.
In the art of the nativity scene this matters a great deal. A coarse material is not automatically equivalent to humility. If every poor figure is dressed in sackcloth, goat hair, dromedary hair or skin, the result is not historical but theatrical. Ordinary poverty can wear wool that is cared for, mended and worn; it does not need to become visual penance.
Leather and skins: object, footwear and visible exception
Leather does have a strong place in representation, but not as a substitute for wool. It comes in through footwear, belts, straps, bags, wineskins, harness and hard-wearing objects. It is a material of everyday use, of work, of travel and of props. A figure that is shod, girded or equipped may need leather even though its tunic and mantle are of wool.
Whole skins, or skins visible as a covering, are another matter. They may exist, but they should not become a cliché. A skin over a shepherd’s shoulders, a skin coat or a covering with visible hair all require the scene, the season, the function and the character to be justified. In many images inherited from the nativity scene, the skin works as a visual shortcut for “biblical shepherd”; the Manual should not accept that shortcut without reasoning it out.
The skins of wild fauna are more restricted still. They may belong to a one-off case, to an austere character, to a desert scene, to an object, a seat, a bed or the chapter on leather, but they do not form an ordinary palette for dressing the Nativity cycle. Having passed through the sieve means that they are not ruled out; it does not mean that they ask to appear.
The scene opens the wardrobe, and the wardrobe opens colour
Each character’s wardrobe will be opened when the particular scene comes round. In the Visitation it will be necessary to decide what Mary can wear during the journey, what belongs to Elizabeth, what place Zechariah occupies as a priest of the course of Abijah and what should be seen without distracting from the scene. In Joseph’s doubt and in his first dream it will be necessary to look at Nazareth, season, domestic interior, trade, age, gesture and condition. None of that is resolved by a catalogue of materials.
The function of this stretch of the research ends here: it leaves the repertoire and the criterion ready. Wool dominates the ordinary wardrobe; linen, the coarse hairs, leather and skins come in when the scene calls for them. But material, on its own, does not yet clothe anyone: it remains to decide how it appears.
Before entering the technical palette of dyes, it is worth opening an intermediate question: why colour mattered and why natural fibre, even if it was the basis of the common wardrobe, should not become a visual uniform. That question belongs to Colour as a manufactured appearance — Colour as a manufactured appearance.
Afterwards, Colours and dyes: the colour palette of biblical figures — Colours and dyes: the colour palette of biblical figures will study what chromatic range each material can take, under what conditions, at what cost and with what visual consequences for the figure. There colour will already be a double question: ancient textile and the palette of today’s painter.