While some scholars see the pro-genitors of the Presepio, in votive statues representing the Lares, divinities of agriculture or spirits of ancestors originally worshipped at crossroads and later with Penates as household gods revered as guardians of the home worshipped in conjunction with Vesta (Roman mythology), in actual fact the earliest representation of the Nativity can be seen in a fresco found in the catacombs of St Priscilla, 2nd century AD, portraying the Mother and Child, the Three Wise Men and Saint Joseph or perhaps the prophet Isaiah, and above a star with eight points.
In later centuries, until about the 5th century more frescoes of the Epiphany were painted in different catacombs. A fresco found in catacomb of St Sebastian shows a sort of manger with the ass and the ox, but Mary and Joseph are not seen.
Later in the 4th and 5th century in bas-relief work on marble sarcophagi the figures of shepherds began to appear and gradually the Presepio came to resemble the present day form with all the figures, the Child, Mary and Joseph, the ass and the ox the Three Wise Men and the shepherds. However this was only bas-relief work, and later painted windows, miniatures, mosaics, not yet the three dimensional representation we know as the Presepio today.
In this sense scholars agree that the oldest Presepio in Italy is a Nativity Scene in marble attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio around 1289. Although some of the figures were broken or lost, this Presepio can still be seen today in the Basilica of St Mary Major in Rome. Up to 1870 many Popes came here to celebrate Christmas Mass .