By Jay Sorgi • Posted April 9, 2026

The artistic representations of faith created by two brothers in Montgomery County are powerful enough that they could be exhibited in the Vatican, says their pastor.

Instead, the five-part tableau that Richard and Ronald Dominguez created to depict the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ is on display during the Easter Season at the brothers’ home parish, Queen of Peace in Ardsley.

“These two brothers put their heart into this,” said Father James DeGrassa.

The tableau is similar to one that the Dominguez brothers had previously renovated: a nativity set at the former St. John of the Cross Parish in Roslyn, which merged with Queen of Peace Parish in 2014.

They made it a Christmas tableau that has become a beloved feature of the Advent and Christmas seasons at Queen of Peace since 2016.

“After Christmas 2024 was over, I was talking to the two brothers and I said, ‘It would be really cool to do something for Holy Week and Easter. You always see nativity scenes, but there’s so much of the story of the passion and the resurrection of Jesus, and you never really see it done in the same way as a nativity scene,’” Father DeGrassa said.

The brothers agreed, and Father DeGrassa began a quest to find the needed figurines.

“I went down the rabbit hole of eBay trying to find the scenes of Jesus’ agony in the garden, (scourging) at the pillar, carrying the cross, the crucifixion, the Blessed Mother, Christ dead in the tomb, Christ risen from the tomb, the angels, everything to get it the same size. I really had to just kind of piece it all together from various sources,” he said.

“After I had all the figurines, then they took it over and they built each scene.”

Ronald Dominguez said he, his brother and three other men created the structure from “everything imaginable,” including cardstock, stained glass, household items and materials anyone can purchase at their local hardware store.

Little did the brothers know when they volunteered for the Easter tableau that the process would turn into months of 12-hour days creating this artwork of faith.

“It involved a lot of different building disciplines,” Dominguez said.

“When Father got statues of our Lord carrying the cross and also the scourging, we said, ‘We can’t just do the tomb. We have to come up with something else.’”

The five scenes had to be taken apart, then reassembled at the church before Holy Week last year.

The first scene, showing the scourging of Jesus, depicts Him tied to a column.

“I created a background that would have been inside the fortress where Jesus was scourged,” Dominguez said. “Part of the research was to get an idea of what the actual area looked like. You can see there is a rack in the back that has the spears that were used in the different crucifixions.”

The scene of Christ carrying the cross creates an unusual viewpoint for the person looking at the scene.

“That one is a scene that is slightly psychologically distant from the viewer because the statue was smaller than the other scale,” Dominguez said. “I raised them on a higher platform to make it look like you are looking up at it.”

The third and center scene involves Christ’s resurrection in a garden, with a tomb in the background.

“It has flowering gardens because the Biblical account says that Jesus was buried in a garden,” Dominguez  said. “In the tomb, you can see that there is the angel sitting in the tomb, and also a recreation of the burial cloth placed as the Gospel describes.”

The fourth scene shows the crucifixion with the Sorrowful Mary.

“As it relates to the Gospel, you can see a small section of the wall of Jerusalem that is modeled after a section of the real wall that existed at the time in Jerusalem,” he said. “It is a darker scene because the Gospel relates how it was not nighttime, but darkness fell across the land.”

The fifth scene shows Christ within the tomb, laid out before His resurrection.

“It shows one of the angels outside guarding it, and also some of the instruments of the crucifixion, the crown of thorns and the nails in the crucifixion,”  Dominguez said.

He added that the tableau includes sanctuary lamps that replicate those used in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The tableau reflects scenes described throughout the Gospels of Holy Week that are rarely displayed in such artistic form as the scene surrounding Jesus’ birth.

Those who have viewed the artwork have shared powerful reactions, from parishioners to students at nearby Good Shepherd Catholic School.

Dominguez gave a tour of the tableau to second graders, who “were really enthralled with it,” he said. “They were asking a whole bunch of questions, how we made these different things. They were really locked into it.

“Other people were sort of overwhelmed. You had everything from people just awestruck with it to the point that some people actually (burst) out crying from the emotion of what they were seeing. A very positive, very positive effect.”

The work of creating the tableau, Dominguez believes, reflects how everyone has God-given talents that they can share with the world.

“I’m glad that I was able to take something, my years and years of model building,” he said, “and transform it into something deeper, something theological that hopefully people can see and it brings them closer to our Lord.”