Gino Severini and Etruscan inspiration: the "two-faced Janus" on display at MAEC in Cortona

From March 30 to May 4, 2025, MAEC in Cortona is hosting the exhibition-dossier Giano-Culsans: the double and the Etruscan inspiration of Gino Severini. From the Collection of the Etruscan Academy of Cortona, where for the first time the famous Etruscan bronze statuette of Culsans and Gino Severini ’s (Cortona, 1883 - Paris, 1966) two-faced Janus will be exhibited together to understand the connection between the artist and his hometown. The exhibition, curated by Sergio Angori, Paolo Bruschetti and Giulio Paolucci, comes to Cortona after a first stop at the Rovati Foundation in Milan. It is part of the larger project Gino Severini and Cortona. An International Artist in His City, promoted by the Municipality of Cortona with MAEC and Accademia Etrusca, and supported by the MiC’s General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity (PAC 2024). The initiative, which will culminate in 2026 with celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the artist’s death, aims to reconstruct the deep connection between Severini and his homeland, enhancing his contribution to 20th-century culture.

“Dear Picasso, I am sending you more photos of the Etruscan statuettes in the Museum of Cortona , which I had made for you and which I hope you will find interesting . My little town of Cortona is really pleasant and I am sorry I have to leave tomorrow ...Perhaps I will see you again in Cannes this winter. I have thought of you a lot among these Etruscans...”: so wrote Gino Severini in 1958 to Picasso.

Fascination with Etruscan art and influence on Severini

In 1958, after years spent between Paris and Rome, Severini returned to Cortona for long summer stays and rediscovered the priceless Etruscan heritage of his town. His fascination with those works prompted him to write a letter to Picasso, in which he shared his enthusiasm for the sculptures housed in the local museum. Among them was the two-faced bronze statuette of Culsans, an Etruscan mythological figure likened to Janus, the Roman deity of passages and thresholds. That visit proved decisive: Severini had the statuette photographed, studying its lines and formal synthesis. The inspiration materialized in 1962, when the artist made his own two-faced Janus in Paris, in Mario Busato’s foundry, a sculpture that reworked Etruscan iconography in a modern key.

Alongside the original sculpture, on loan from his daughter Romana Severini Brunori, the exhibition presents three preparatory studies in graphite on cardboard and a posthumous casting from 1996, also made at the initiative of his daughter and now part of MAEC’s collections. Enriching the exhibition is another work that testifies to Severini’s interest in ancient art: the Natura morta con aringa e compostiera blu (1946-47), donated to Cortona by journalist Alfonso Leonetti in memory of his wife Pia Carena. In this painting, the objects depicted hark back to the typical bucchero pottery of the Etruscan aristocracy, a sign that the influence of classicism was already present in his pictorial production.

Severini, Picasso and the Etruscan Legacy.

Severini’s interest in Etruscan art was not a fad dictated by the fashions of the time. While many twentieth-century artists were fascinated by the expressive and primitive force of those works, the passion for the Etruscans was a deep-rooted cultural heritage in him. Already in the eighteenth century, with the birth of the Accademia Etrusca, Cortona had begun an important work of research and appreciation of its Italic past, a process that would inevitably leave its mark on future generations.

“Cortona is a very, very ancient city,” Severini had written to Picasso. “Just think that I discovered it last year, so to speak, because I left when I was 16 (expelled from school, from all the schools in Italy, for 2 years), and at that time the Pelasgians, the Romans and even Signorelli, my fellow citizen, interested me little.”

This awareness led Severini to rework the two-faced statuette and share his enthusiasm with Picasso. The exhibition highlights precisely the bond between the two masters, revealing a lesser-known aspect of their friendship: the confrontation over the rediscovery of ancient art as a source of inspiration for the modern avant-garde.

“The curious thing,” writes Romana Severini in the interesting publication accompanying the exhibition, “is that in those days Picasso also made a sculpture inspired by the Etruscan Janus, which I saw presented at an auction. One can speculate that Picasso reading my father’s letter written from Cortona (...) had enticed himself, he curious about all that he could undertake anew, to elaborate his own version..”

The opening of the exhibition, scheduled for March 29, 2025, will be preceded by the event Tutta la vita di un pittore, a conversation between Romana Severini and art historian Daniela Fonti, curator of the Gino Severini and Cortona project. It will be an opportunity to reknit memories and explore the figure of the artist through the testimony of his daughter, who passionately guarded and promoted her father’s legacy. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with contributions by Paolo Bruschetti, Sergio Angori, Giulio Paolucci, Romana Severini Brunori, Paolo Giulierini and Marco Belpoliti, offering an in-depth look at the themes discussed and the works on display.

Gino Severini and Etruscan inspiration: the "two-faced Janus" on display at MAEC in Cortona

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