We arrive near the impressive Pinacoteca di Brera building at about 2PM from Indro Montanelli Gardens. There are a few stalls selling souvenirs outside but we enter the interior courtyard looking for the museum entrance. There is no ticket shop here, you have to buy online first which we did well in advance when we found out we are going to Milan.
But many people are not aware of this and are gathering in front of the ticket checkers negotiating, complaining and so on. We agree with them in principle but enter using our tickets and make our way inside the museum. No paper map is offered so luckily we take a photo at the beginning and are able to use that us we negotiate the confusing museum.
Pinacoteca di Brera besides the paintings has also saved frescoes from a few buildings including the Porro oratory at Mocchirolo. Which is now housed in a chapel like buildings likely similar to the original location.
The pinacoteca is a brainchild of Napoleon and opened in 1809 with Italian art masterpieces taken from churches and monasteries that were suppressed at the time when Milan was the capital city of the Kingdom of Italy.
We explore the rooms in order however we are not such big fans of religious paintings so we try to pass those a bit faster. The rooms themselves and the corridors are quite impressive though.
Some of the paintings are huge, they take almost a full wall in a large sized room. They are impressive especially as you take in all the little details painted in. We also like that the rooms have benches, at this point we are already quite tired and rest on them relatively often while taking in the paintings.
At some point the art style changes towards more portraits and allegorical paintings with fewer religious topics, which is quite nice.
Almost in the middle of the museum sits a statue of Napoleon, obviously he was quite popular or at least a popular model in Milan.
The topics change even more towards peasants and rural life with a cornucopia of products shown in the paintings. Here we learn that the peasants are intentionally represented as caricatures in contrast with the nobles which were presented life-like in their portraits.
Pinacoteca di Brera has an extensive collection of even more modern paintings including Picasso’s and other famous paintings. However they do not have a place to exhibit them which restricts the existing exhibitions to up to 19th century.
As we approach the end of the covered period the paintings become more interesting to us, with landscape paintings or covering major events and wars that happened in the area.
The collection ends with one of the most famous paintings in Brera, the Kiss by Francesco Hayes. It represents, allegorically, the alliance of France with Italy against the Habsburg Empire leading to the creation of the independent Kingdom of Italy.
Exiting the museum proper we find out that there is another area below the museum that we can enter. Here there are a few reliefs or sculptures which are less visited but quite well realized.
We explore the area in depth but unfortunately the Botanical Garden, which is where the signs are pointing towards, is closed so we return to the main entrance and exit to explore the larger neighborhood.
