Tourist Attraction in Cortona:
Museo dell'Accademia Etrusca e della città di Cortona

Palazzo Casali, home to the Etruscan museum, is one of the most important museums in the city of Cortona. Probably built during the 13th century and was the residence of the family. The lordship of the Casali lasted until 1409, when the armies of Ladislao, king of Naples, just took possession of the city, sacked the building that was confiscated together with the other movable and immovable property of the family. At the end of the Renaissance the building took on its current appearance: in fact, in the early seventeenth century, the façade and the front part were renovated to a design by Filippo Berrettini. In 1727 the Etruscan Academy was born and the Grand Duke of Tuscany Giangastone de 'Medici granted some rooms on the last floor of the building. The works to which the rooms were subjected allowed the rise of the museum and the library. In the meantime the theater continued to exist, rebuilt after the accident of 1511 and renewed in 1666 by the Accademia degli Uniti, which remained in use until the mid-nineteenth century, when the Teatro Signorelli was built in the place where it stood the church of Sant'Andrea. In the eighties the building underwent a radical restoration with the recovery of almost all the rooms. At the end of the works, the museum was able to double its extension, placing itself as one of the major exhibition companies in the region. Today the Palazzo Casali is the primary center of the cultural activities of the city of Cortona: hosting the library, the museum, the historical archive, the exhibition rooms and the offices of the municipal councilor of culture and the headquarters of the Etruscan Academy. Most famous works of the museum. Maternity is certainly one of the most famous works by the futurist painter Gino Severini. Performed in oil in 1916, a crucial year for the fate of Futurism and the development of Cubism, it is one of the most complete expressions of the classical experience of the artist of Cortona origin, as well as proof of his exceptional technical and artistic expertise. The style of the painting marks a sharp inversion of tendency with respect to the avant-garde requests that had strongly characterized the pictorial production of the time. Maternity can simply be considered the portrait of Jeanne Fort, daughter of the French poet Paul Fort, as well as Severini's wife, with whom she married in 1913. The position and expressiveness of the woman, of which the artist highlights the physiognomic peculiarities, and that holds in his arms the second-born son Antonio died prematurely, clearly remember the Madonnas of Florentine Mannerism. This work was a great success, earning an endless series of appreciations from many artists, including the French poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire. Word processing: Giovambattista Spagnuolo (Myooni)

Attractions in Cortona