Museo dell'Accademia Etrusca

Last updated
Facade of the Palazzo Casali and entrance to MAEC Museu da Academia Etrusca.jpg
Facade of the Palazzo Casali and entrance to MAEC

The Museo dell'Accademia Etrusca (Museum of the Etruscan Academy) is a public archeological museum housed in the Palazzo Casali, also known as the town's Palazzo Pretorio, located in the historic center of Cortona, province of Arezzo, region of Tuscany, Italy. The museum entrance faces Piazza Signorelli, and is one house east of a facade of city hall (Palazzo Comunale) and sits west across Via Casali from the Teatro Signorelli. This was one of the first public museums in Italy. Now linked with the Civic Art museum of Cortona, the complex is known as the MAEC (Museo dell’Accademia Etrusca e della Città di Cortona),

Contents

Description

The 18th-century spawned a renewed interest in an Italian, if not Tuscan, antiquity; to many the most autochthonous antiquity in Tuscany was assigned to the Etruscans. In Cortona, this coalesced to form the Etruscan Academy, which originated as a literate "Society for the purchase of books" founded by the Venuti brothers in 1726. The next year, the academy was constituted as the Accademia di Scienze et Erudizioni. Abbot Onofrio Baldelli, a collector of rocks, fossils, and Etruscan antiquities donated his collections to group. In 1728, it became the Accademia Etrusca delle Antichità ed Iscrizioni. The initial donation included a pair of globes (terrestrial and celestial) dated 1714–15, and another celestial globe dated 1710. [1]

The Library of the academy, in the same building as the Museum, possessed manuscripts, codexes and parchments dating as old as the 11th through the 19th century, rare printed texts from the 15th and 16th centuries and thousands of volumes from later times.

The Palazzo Casali in which the collection was held was built by the 13th-century by the Casali family, who resided here from 1325 to 1409, while they were then lords of Cortona. When Cortona became property of Tuscany, this palace housed the appointed captains, and was known as the Palazzo Pretorio. The heraldic shields displayed on its external walls belonged to the various leaders. Starting from 1728 the main floor (piano nobile) hosted the Accademia Etrusca and its Museum.

The two underground floors, that were prisons in the past, now house the Museum of the Etruscan and Roman City of Cortona. The civic museums of Cortona were re-organized in 2005, forming what is now the MAEC (Museo dell’Accademia Etrusca e della Città di Cortona). The first floor houses the town library BCAE (Biblioteca del Comune) and the historical archive of the academy.

Collections

The museum includes: [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luca Signorelli</span> Italian Renaissance painter (c. 1441 1445–1523)

Luca Signorelli was an Italian Renaissance painter from Cortona, in Tuscany, who was noted in particular for his ability as a draftsman and his use of foreshortening. His massive frescos of the Last Judgment (1499–1503) in Orvieto Cathedral are considered his masterpiece.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pompeo Batoni</span> Italian painter

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni was an Italian painter who displayed a solid technical knowledge in his portrait work and in his numerous allegorical and mythological pictures. The high number of foreign visitors travelling throughout Italy and reaching Rome during their "Grand Tour" led the artist to specialize in portraits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cortona</span> Comune in Tuscany, Italy

Cortona is a town and comune in the province of Arezzo, in Tuscany, Italy. It is the main cultural and artistic centre of the Val di Chiana after Arezzo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Città di Castello</span> Comune in Umbria, Italy

Città di Castello ; "Castle Town") is a city and comune in the province of Perugia, in the northern part of Umbria. It is situated on a slope of the Apennines, on the flood plain along the upper part of the river Tiber. The city is 56 km (35 mi) north of Perugia and 104 km (65 mi) south of Cesena on the motorway SS 3 bis. It is connected by the SS 73 with Arezzo and the A1 highway, situated 38 km (23 mi) west. The comune of Città di Castello has an exclave named Monte Ruperto within Marche.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Volterra</span> Comune in Tuscany, Italy

Volterra is a walled mountaintop town in the Tuscany region of Italy. Its history dates from before the 8th century BC and it has substantial structures from the Etruscan, Roman, and Medieval periods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palazzo Pitti</span> Renaissance palace and museum in Florence, Italy

The Palazzo Pitti, in English sometimes called the Pitti Palace, is a vast, mainly Renaissance, palace in Florence, Italy. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. The core of the present palazzo dates from 1458 and was originally the town residence of Luca Pitti, an ambitious Florentine banker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Galleria dell'Accademia</span> Art museum in Florence, Italy

The Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze, or "Gallery of the Academy of Florence", is an art museum in Florence, Italy. It is best known as the home of Michelangelo's sculpture David. It also has other sculptures by Michelangelo and a large collection of paintings by Florentine artists, mostly from the period 1300–1600. It is smaller and more specialized than the Uffizi, the main art museum in Florence. It adjoins the Accademia di Belle Arti or academy of fine arts of Florence, but despite the name has no other connection with it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accademia di San Luca</span> Italian association of artists in Rome

The Accademia di San Luca is an Italian academy of artists in Rome. The establishment of the Accademia de i Pittori e Scultori di Roma was approved by papal brief in 1577, and in 1593 Federico Zuccari became its first principe or director; the statutes were ratified in 1607. Other founders included Girolamo Muziano and Pietro Olivieri. The Academy was named for Luke the Evangelist, the patron saint of painters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ridolfo Ghirlandaio</span> Italian painter (1483–1561)

Ridolfo di Domenico Bigordi, better known as Ridolfo Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter active mainly in Florence. He was the son of Domenico Ghirlandaio.

<i>Tabula Cortonensis</i> Third most extensive etruscan text

The Tabula Cortonensis is a 2200-year-old, inscribed bronze tablet in the Etruscan language, discovered in Cortona, Italy. It may record for posterity the details of an ancient legal transaction which took place in the ancient Tuscan city of Cortona, known to the Etruscans as Curtun. Its 40-line, 200-word, two-sided inscription is the third longest inscription found in the Etruscan language, after the Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis and the Tabula Capuana, and the longest discovered in the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foiano della Chiana</span> Comune in Tuscany, Italy

Foiano della Chiana is a small agricultural town in eastern Tuscany, in the province of Arezzo, between the cities of Sinalunga and Cortona. It is well known for its annual carnival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sesto Fiorentino</span> Comune in Tuscany, Italy

Sesto Fiorentino, known locally as just Sesto, is a commune in the Metropolitan City of Florence, Tuscany, central Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sinalunga</span> Comune in Tuscany, Italy

Sinalunga is a town and comune in the province of Siena, in the Tuscany region of central Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucignano</span> Comune in Tuscany, Italy

Lucignano is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Arezzo in the Italian region Tuscany, located about 70 kilometres (43 mi) southeast of Florence and about 25 kilometres (16 mi) southwest of Arezzo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doccia porcelain</span>

The Doccia porcelain manufactory, at Doccia, a frazione of Sesto Fiorentino, near Florence, was in theory founded in 1735 by marchese Carlo Ginori near his villa, though it does not appear to have produced wares for sale until 1746. It has remained the most important Italian porcelain factory ever since.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio Francesco Gori</span> Florentine antiquarian

Antonio Francesco Gori, on his titlepages Franciscus Gorius, was an Italian antiquarian, a priest in minor orders, provost of the Baptistery of San Giovanni from 1746, and a professor at the Liceo, whose numerous publications of ancient Roman sculpture and antiquities formed part of the repertory on which 18th-century scholarship as well as the artistic movement of neoclassicism were based. In 1735 he was a founding member of a circle of antiquaries and connoisseurs in Florence called the Società Colombaria, the predecessor of the Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere la Colombaria, to foster "not only Tuscan Poetry and Eloquence, or one faculty only; but almost all the most distinguished and useful parts of human knowledge: in a word, it is what the Greeks called Encyclopedia".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diocesan Museum (Cortona)</span>

The Diocesan Museum in Cortona is an art museum in Cortona, Tuscany, Italy. Located on the former site of the local Church of Gesù, it houses works of art by artists such as Fra Angelico, Pietro Lorenzetti, Bartolomeo della Gatta, Luca Signorelli and Sassetta. The oldest item in the museum is a marble Roman sarcophagus, depicting depicts the battle of Dionysus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palazzo Pretorio, Prato</span> Medieval Town Hall in Prato

The Palazzo Pretorio is a historical building in Prato, Tuscany, Italy. It was the old city hall, standing in front of the current Palazzo Comunale. It now accommodates the Civic Museum of Prato, which was reopened in September 2013.

Guglielmo Maetzke was an Italian archaeologist and etruscologist. A pupil of the Etruscologist Massimo Pallottino, he directed important excavation campaigns in Tuscany, Lazio, Campania and Sardinia.

References

  1. Museo Galileo, website entry on museum.
  2. Museum website.