Pinacoteca di Brera

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MILAN, ITALY - FEBRUARY 24, 2019: visitors sit in hall in Pinacoteca di Brera (Brera Art Gallery) in Milan. The Brera is national picture gallery of ancient and modern art in Palazzo Brera

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Pinacoteca di Brera

museum, Milan, Italy

Also known as: Brera Art Gallery, Brera Picture Gallery

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Dec 8, 2024 • Article History

Quick Facts

English:: Brera Picture Gallery

Date:: 1809 - present

Areas Of Involvement:: art

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News •

Milan's Brera boosts its cultural cachet with an overdue modern art wing and Leonardo's Last Supper • Dec. 8, 2024, 3:02 AM ET (AP)

Pinacoteca di Brera, art museum in Milan, founded in 1809 by Napoleon I, and one of Italy’s largest art galleries. Its original collection was that of Milan’s Academy of Fine Arts, though its most important works were acquired later. The museum’s holdings consist mainly of Italian paintings from the Quattrocento (15th century) to the Rococo period (18th century). It has especially rich collections of Venetian and Lombard paintings from the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

(Read Sister Wendy’s Britannica essay on art appreciation.)

Palazzo BreraPalazzo di Brera, which houses the Pinacoteca di Brera, in Milan.

The gallery is housed in the Palazzo di Brera, an 18th-century Neoclassical structure that was originally built, from plans by Francesco Maria Ricchino, as a Jesuit college. The same building also houses the Academy of Fine Arts, founded in 1776, and the Braidense National Library, founded in 1770.

(Read Glenn Lowry’s Britannica essay on "Art Museums and Their Digital Future.")

This article was most recently revised and updated by Richard Pallardy.