Pinacoteca di Brera private tour
Duration: 2 hours
Language: English or any other language chosen
Included in price: guide service for 2 hours, entrance ticket with reservation, audioguides for groups larger than 10 participants.
To get an estimate: please fill in the form you see at right choosing the date, the number of people and the language chosen.
Availability: everyday except Mondays, New Year’s Day, the 1st of May and Christmas.
Itinerary: the tour includes the main works of the Pinacoteca di Brera. For more information about the works exposed read what follows.
Brera’s collections come from churches and cloisters that were eliminated during the Reign of Maria Teresa and successively under Napoleon.
Children: under 6 years old not accomplished they are free and they don’t need to be signalled in the “Notes” space of the reservation form. For young people from 6 to 18 years old please choose the 6-17 years old ticket.
The collections of the Pinacoteca di Brera became so rich and numerous that the museum guards portraits, self-portraits and works like the Marriage of the Virgin by Raphael, the Virgin with Child by Giovanni Bellini and the Crucifixion by Bramantino.
When Milan became the capital city of the Italian Reign (1805) the Pinacoteca received the most important paintings confiscated in the churches of the region that the army of Napoleon conquered. Brera received in fact works of art from the regions of Veneto, Emilia Romagna and Marche. To solve the problem of the clear absence of paintings by Leonardo and Raphael, 23 paintings were took away from the “Quadreria Arcivescovile” of Milan and thanks to an agreement with the Louvre Museum, five paintings by Rubens, Joardens, Van Dyck and Rembrandt representing the Flemish School of the 17 century came to Brera. In the same years a lot of frescos by Bernardino Luini, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Vincenzo Foppa, Bergognone and Bramantino came to Brera from the churches of Milan and its region. As a result, Brera had the biggest collection of this genre.
After the Restoration (1815) Brera’s collections grew slower but steadily thanks to donations, gifts and acquisitions (one of this is the Lamentation of Christ by Mantegna, bought from the successors of Giuseppe Bossi in 1824 and the Madonna of the Rose Garden by Luini, arrived at Brera in 1826). In 1882 the Pinacoteca, so as the Galleries of Venice and Boulogne, became independent from the Academy of Fine Arts, which received a big part of the paintings of 19th century.
Donations and acquisitions went on until the Second World War, so that the Pinacoteca received important works by Correggio, Pietro Longhi, Piazzetta, Tiepolo, Canaletto and Fattori so as Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio and the Pergolato by Silvestro Lega, both bought from the Association “Amici di Brera” and the Milan museums. Because of the bombings of 1943, Brera’s palace suffered a lot of damages – the Napoleon Rooms were completely destroyed – but it was rapidly rebuilt and the Pinacoteca opened again in 1950 with an exposition of Pietro Portaluppi.
In the 70es Brera received an extraordinary donation of Emilio and Maria Jesi, donation that comprehends works of the main artists of the first part of the 20th century like Boccioni, Braque, Carrà, De Pisis, Marino Marini, Modigliani and Morandi. Another donation received by Brera was a part of the collection of Lamberto and America Vitali. These donations represent the most important moments of the constant growth of masterpieces of the museum.