Page 27 of Marcello

She took me over to one of the cabinets, and I realized that the boxes all had magnifying glasses built into them.

“Look in there,” Federica ordered.

I peered closer at one of the magnifying glasses –

And realized I was looking at a tiny nativity scene.

It was more impressionistic than realistic – little slivers of color without facial features – but it was definitely a nativity scene. I could make out Mary in blue next to a manger with a baby, and Joseph on the other side. Around them were cows and donkeys, with an angel perched atop the stable.

I moved so I could see around the side of the magnifying glass –

And realized that the entire nativity scene was inside half a walnut shell.

“What the fuck?!” I exclaimed.

Federica laughed. “They’re all the work of one priest whose mother died. To deal with his grief, he started making miniature nativity scenes. The figures are basically just scraps of dried paint that he created to look like people. It’s amazing – look over here, there’s one inside a hemp seed.”

The hemp seed nativity was so minuscule, I could barely make out the figures. I preferred the bigger ones, where you could clearly see the Wise Men bowing before the Christ child, or shepherds with their flocks.

Yet even those fit inside pistachio shells.

“It’s not just nativity scenes,” Federica said. “Come over here.”

She led me inside a 4x10 space surrounded by wooden shelves and glass panes.

These cabinets also had miniatures –

But they were something entirely different.

In the first miniature, a tiny figure in red walked through a dark forest.

In the second, he gazed up at a figure in blue on a rocky cliff.

After that, the two figures appeared together in various scenes.

In one, they watched a ghostly figure rising from a grave.

In another, they looked down at ghastly yellow bodies reaching up to them.

Not every scene had the same two figures in them.

In one of the most memorable, a dozen red devils filled a massive cavern.

“What are these?” I asked.

“Scenes from Dante’s Inferno,” Federica said gleefully.

“What?!”

“Look.” She showed me her phone. Onscreen were black-and-white drawings. “These were done by an artist named Gustave Doré.”

I recognized several of the pictures as much more detailed versions of what I’d just seen in the cabinets.

I looked back at the dozens of miniatures on the shelves. “So these are…”

“Dante and Virgil in Hell,” she finished. “Some of them are of Dante in Purgatory and Paradise – but the best ones are from the Inferno.”

I remembered what Fausto had told me that day in Tuscany: