Description
The Pinacoteca di Brera is Milan's great art gallery, in the Palazzo di Brera, in the neighborhood of the same name. It collects mostly Venetian and Lombard painting, with masterpieces by Mantegna, Raphael, Piero della Francesca and Caravaggio.
You enter through a beautiful courtyard with two-story arcades. In the center stands Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker, in bronze, sculpted by Canova. Under the arcades, statues and busts of illustrious Milanese.
The heart of the visit is the room devoted to Urbino. Here you will find Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin, signed and dated 1504, and the Montefeltro Altarpiece, the last known work of Piero della Francesca. They are the museum's two icons.
Just before, Mantegna's Dead Christ: the body seen from the feet, in a daring foreshortening, next to other works by the Venetian painter. In another room, Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, one of only two canvases of his you can see in Milan, along with the Basket of Fruit at the Ambrosiana.
The 19th century is Hayez's turn, who taught drawing at Brera: his Kiss is one of the artist's best-known works. In the middle of a room you will also find Pellizza da Volpedo's large Fiumana, a preparatory study for The Fourth Estate.
Almost all of Italy's great museums were born from a collector's passion. Brera was not: it was born from a political idea, and from a requisition. At the beginning there was only the Academy of Fine Arts, founded by Maria Theresa of Austria in 1776, with plaster casts and small paintings for students to copy.
Then the French arrived, and churches and convents across northern Italy were suppressed. The best works left for Paris, the rest took the road to Milan: the new gallery was meant to tell the story of the art of the Kingdom of Italy. To house them, the old church of Santa Maria di Brera was split into two floors.
The first rooms opened on August 15, 1809, Napoleon's birthday. In the Second World War the bombs of 1943 brought down the vaults of twenty-six rooms out of thirty-four, but the paintings were already safe, thanks to the director Fernanda Wittgens.
Don't miss
• Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin.
• Piero della Francesca's Montefeltro Altarpiece.
• Mantegna's Dead Christ.
• Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus.
• Hayez's Kiss.
Did you know?
• The Supper at Emmaus arrived in 1939, bought by the Amici di Brera, an association of the museum's supporters.
• Brera stands on an old convent of the Umiliati: the name comes from "braida", uncultivated land at the city's gates.
You enter through a beautiful courtyard with two-story arcades. In the center stands Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker, in bronze, sculpted by Canova. Under the arcades, statues and busts of illustrious Milanese.
The heart of the visit is the room devoted to Urbino. Here you will find Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin, signed and dated 1504, and the Montefeltro Altarpiece, the last known work of Piero della Francesca. They are the museum's two icons.
Just before, Mantegna's Dead Christ: the body seen from the feet, in a daring foreshortening, next to other works by the Venetian painter. In another room, Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, one of only two canvases of his you can see in Milan, along with the Basket of Fruit at the Ambrosiana.
The 19th century is Hayez's turn, who taught drawing at Brera: his Kiss is one of the artist's best-known works. In the middle of a room you will also find Pellizza da Volpedo's large Fiumana, a preparatory study for The Fourth Estate.
Almost all of Italy's great museums were born from a collector's passion. Brera was not: it was born from a political idea, and from a requisition. At the beginning there was only the Academy of Fine Arts, founded by Maria Theresa of Austria in 1776, with plaster casts and small paintings for students to copy.
Then the French arrived, and churches and convents across northern Italy were suppressed. The best works left for Paris, the rest took the road to Milan: the new gallery was meant to tell the story of the art of the Kingdom of Italy. To house them, the old church of Santa Maria di Brera was split into two floors.
The first rooms opened on August 15, 1809, Napoleon's birthday. In the Second World War the bombs of 1943 brought down the vaults of twenty-six rooms out of thirty-four, but the paintings were already safe, thanks to the director Fernanda Wittgens.
Don't miss
• Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin.
• Piero della Francesca's Montefeltro Altarpiece.
• Mantegna's Dead Christ.
• Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus.
• Hayez's Kiss.
Did you know?
• The Supper at Emmaus arrived in 1939, bought by the Amici di Brera, an association of the museum's supporters.
• Brera stands on an old convent of the Umiliati: the name comes from "braida", uncultivated land at the city's gates.