Maria Lai (1919-2013) is an important Italian artist. Since 1954 until her later years, she had been producing little sculptural works she named *Presepi*, “Nativity scenes”. The article tries to understand some formal peculiarities of the formal structure and of the meaning of these works by comparing them with the little-known history of traditional nativity scenes and with the concept of sculptural space of her teacher, Arturo Martini.