Tourist Attraction in Cortona:
Basilica di Santa Margherita

The basilica of Santa Margherita is a sacred building located in Cortona. The sanctuary is dedicated to the figure of Santa Margherita, patron of Cortona and the Franciscan tertiary, and to the subsequent cultural and spiritual activity of the Franciscan Observants. At the death of the saint (1297) it was decided to build a church in his honor, next to the ancient church of San Basilio that Margherita herself had restored after choosing it as a place of penance and prayer. In 1304 the sacred building was already built, but it continued to embellish it with important frescoes throughout the fourteenth century. Only a few fragments preserved in the Diocesan Museum have come to us from this mural cycle, but there is evidence of this in a seventeenth century codex documenting with twenty one watercolors the wall paintings lost in 1653 when, due to their poor state of conservation, they were blanched. The analysis of the surviving fragments leads to date them around 1335 and to attribute them to the workshop of one or both Lorenzetti brothers. In 1385 the church was entrusted to the Olivetan monks, replaced in 1389 by the Observant Minors who still today take care of it and welcome visitors. Preserved in the chapel of the left transept (as the last landing of forced wanderings for architectural reasons) is the sepulchral monument of Santa Margherita in carved marble, work of the Sienese area with clear references to Giovanni Pisano, work of Angelo and Francesco di Pietro ( 1362). The chest, which rests on three corbels that divide two scenes with postmortem miracles, bears the body of the saint on the floor, flanked by two telamon angels holding up the lid of the ark and a drape, surmounted by a cuspidated structure, supported by columns twisted. The chest is divided in the front in four panels: Santa Margherita in the act of receiving the habit of a Franciscan penitent; The saint acquitted by Christ for the merits of St. Francis; Saint Margaret who gives the garment to the poor; The death of the saint with the soul welcomed by Christ. In reality, the body of Santa Margherita is kept within an urn placed above the main altar, edged by a frame in embossed and chiseled silver foil and glass paste. The Cortonesi, who were charged with the onerous financial commitment, had commissioned the design of the frame to Pietro Berrettini and commissioned the realization first of the Florentine Adriano Lani (seventeenth century) and then an unknown Florentine silversmith. On the altar to the right of the main altar is placed, after the restructuring of the early eighteenth century, the Crucifix known as Santa Margherita, as the local tradition recognizes that crucifix in front of which Santa Margherita used to gather in the church of San Francesco and that he had spoken to her. The crucifix was placed here in 1602. Tied to a Cortona client, and precisely to that of the Lucci family whose coat of arms is playfully shown by the little angel is, the important canvas painted in 1602 by: Francesco Vanni with God the Father, the Immaculate Conception and the saints Francesco, Domenico, Ludovico di Tolosa and the blessed Margherita da Cortona. The work shows one of the early seventeenth-century depictions of Blessed Margaret, who perhaps for this very reason she appears slightly out of line with other saints. Word processing: Giovambattista Spagnuolo (Myooni)

Attractions in Cortona