Museo Diocesano del Capitolo di Cortona

Across the piazza from Cortona's cathedral, the former church of the Gesù guards the paintings the city's churches can no longer keep safe. Here hang Fra Angelico's Annunciation, Signorelli's Deposition and a Lorenzetti Maestà — the altarpieces around which Cortona's artistic reputation was built.

Why it matters

When a town's churches can no longer protect their altarpieces, a diocese builds them a home; Cortona's is unusually distinguished. The museum was inaugurated in 1945 at the initiative of bishop Giuseppe Franciolini and the Cathedral Chapter, after more than two decades of preparation that began when Signorelli's canvases were first displayed in 1923 for the fourth centenary of his death. Its building is as much an exhibit as its walls: the Complesso del Gesù, raised between 1498 and 1505 for the Confraternita del Buon Gesù, stacks a single-nave church over a frescoed oratory. The prize is the Annunciation that Fra Angelico painted for Cortona, one of the defining images of the early Renaissance, shown here together with the core of Signorelli's local production and major Sienese panels. The collection includes works of major importance to Tuscan art history.

What to notice

The collection's central works include Fra Angelico's Annunciation and nine canvases by Signorelli, including the Deposition and the Communions of the Apostles. From Siena comes Pietro Lorenzetti's Maestà with a monumental painted Crucifix nearby, and Bartolomeo della Gatta's Assunta carries the local Renaissance forward. In the lower oratory, Cristoforo Gherardi, a collaborator of Vasari known as il Doceno, frescoed the walls in 1555; a terracotta Lamentation of 1519 reflects Cortona's sculptural tradition. On the staircase, Gino Severini's preparatory cartoons for fourteen Via Crucis mosaics tie the collection to the twentieth century. The collection also includes a Roman sarcophagus carved with a battle of Dionysus and the Amazons, the Vagnucci reliquary and Passerini vestments designed with drawings by Raffaellino del Garbo and Andrea del Sarto.

Context and history

The museum's history explains its shape. Signorelli's works entered the building as a temporary exhibition in 1923; the Cathedral Chapter and other diocesan churches sent their treasures from 1939; and after the war the collection settled permanently into the Gesù complex, its three Renaissance altars still remembering the Signorelli altarpieces once mounted there. The building itself carries the Confraternity's marks: the coffered wooden ceiling executed by Mezzanotte above, and the oratory below where the brotherhood met. Over the decades the museum became a reference point for sacred art of the Cortonese territory. Its collections preserve works originally made for the cathedral and other churches of the diocese.