Trinity Diorama

A few Wall Street clerks and runners, several loafers, a handful of worshipers and some Roman Catholic nuns dropped in at odd times last week on Manhattan's old Trinity Church to inspect a large cabinet in the nave. They beheld, behind glass, an illuminated statuet of Jesus Christ, praying in a Garden of Gethsemane in which every leaf and blade of grass was meticulously modeled and painted. Every four and one-half minutes the lights slowly dimmed and the haloed plaster head of Jesus raised slowly heavenward. This was "the first animated diorama ever made of a religious subject," lent to Trinity by its makers, Diorama Corp. of America.

A diorama differs from a cyclorama, panorama or simple miniature group in that it is both three-dimensional and, from the spectator's point of view, in true perspective. From front to back, a diorama's figures and objects diminish in size, merging imperceptibly with a curved, painted background. Diorama Corp. is proud of its historical and pictorial accuracy, has done much work for the Smithsonian Institution as well as for such firms as Ford and Sears Roebuck. Its President Edward Heckler Burdick conceived the idea of doing Christ in Gethsemane, to be followed by a half-dozen other Biblical scenes for possible exhibition at the New York World's Fair in 1939.

The Gethsemane diorama was lately on view at Diorama Corp.'s Chicago offices. A Mrs. Ryan viewed it and, unaware that it is animated by electric motors, fainted when Christ's head moved. She told her good friend, Trinity's Rector Frederic Sydney Fleming, this experience and he got President Burdick to lend the diorama, valued at $7,500, for the Easter season.

In Philadelphia last week several hundred clergymen were invited to the Planetarium donated by Soapman Samuel Simeon Fels to the Franklin Institute. They beheld ''The Easter Story," projected not only with lights showing how the moon and sun determine the falling of Easter Sunday (this year: March 28) but also--to the accompaniment of phonograph records and scripture readings--with flood and spotlights which were supposed to suggest crosses and angels.

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