Upstairs from Brera Academy, this gallery houses Milan’s impressive collection of old masters, much of it "lifted" by Napoleon during his Italian campaigns.
Rembrandt, Goya and van Dyck are among the famous artists featured here, but you’re here to see the Italians: Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and the Bellini brothers. Much of the work has tremendous emotional clout, notably Mantegna’s brutal Lamentation over the Dead Christ.
Titian, Tintoretto & Veronese
The high-water mark of the Renaissance dawned in Venice in the 16th century with an extraordinary confluence of talent in Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. Room IX is a showcase of the period, including Titian’s St Jerome.
Caravaggio
Dark, brooding room XXVIII delivers an emotional thump, home to the academy’s only Caravaggio, Cena in Emmaus (Supper at Emmaus). Gone is the neat formal classicism of Raphael and the mannerist trickery of Bronzino, replaced by a potent, weighty naturalism, framed by an existential conflict between light and dark.
Flemish Masters
Rubens, Van Dyck and Jan Fyt paintings arrived from the Louvre in 1813 in exchange for works Napoleon took from Milan, and are displayed in rooms XXXI and XXXIII.
The 19Th Century
In the final rooms the artwork is lighter, imbued with romanticism and patriotism. Francesco Hayez' intense and luminous Il bacio (The Kiss; 1859), one of the gallery's most reproduced works, came to symbolize the hopes of the Risorgimento (reunification period).
