The Cortona Chandelier

From Dec. 14, 2022 to March 5, 2023, the Art Museum housed the Etruscan chandelier from Cortona: a rare bronze object with fine decorations intended to illuminate a place of worship.

n addition to being one of the masterpieces of Etruscan artistic craftsmanship, the chandelier bears witness to the history of the Etruscan Academy and its desire to preserve an exceptional heritage and make it available to the community. Its temporary presence in the Art Museum makes it possible to strengthen the collaboration between the two institutions and to bring an object of great charm and refinement to Milan.

Found by chance in 1840 in the Cortona countryside, the chandelier was purchased by the Accademia for inclusion in the civic Etruscan collection. The lower face is decorated with figurative scenes and phytomorphic motifs, and in the centre is a gorgoneion with a face framed by bipartite curls on the forehead and a large mouth with a hanging tongue; all around the gorgoneion are small tangled snakes, made by hand. On the edges are alternating reliefs of small Acheloo faces and 16 spouts in which the lamp oil was burned using special wicks. Accompanying the chandelier is a plaque with an inscription, added at a later period but found together with the artefact, informing about the consecration or rededication of the chandelier, attesting to the practice of reuse in past civilisations.

Podcast

On the occasion of the exhibition Fondazione Luigi Rovati has produced a podcast series of four episodes in collaboration with doppiozero, together with Accademia Etrusca and MAEC of Cortona.

An editorial project involving Claudio Franzoni, scholar of Greek images and the Greek world, Marco Belpoliti, writer and literary critic, and Cristina Battocletti, journalist and writer, with the aim of enriching the exhibition with an additional in-depth study tool.

The podcast consists of four episodes in Italian about the extraordinary Etruscan artefact, the only two occasions on which it has been exhibited outside Tuscany, the current exhibition in Milan and the Cortona institution to which it has belonged for over 200 years. Listen to the episodes on Spreaker, Spotify and Apple Podcast.