Milan · Brera
Pinacoteca di Brera
Napoleon's art seizures, hung above a working art academy
Mantegna's Dead Christ, foreshortened from the soles of the feet
Founded as a teaching collection for the art academy and filled, after 1805, with altarpieces taken from churches and monasteries across northern Italy under Napoleonic suppression. The consequence is a gallery of very large religious paintings displayed at eye level in daylight rather than in the dark chapels they were made for.
Mantegna's Dead Christ, Piero della Francesca's Brera Madonna, Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin and Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus are all here, and the art students still work downstairs.
The detail
Good to know
- Founded
- 1776, gallery from 1809
- Origin
- Napoleonic church suppressions
- Highlights
- Mantegna, Piero, Raphael, Caravaggio
- Late
- Thursday until 22:15
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