The Pinacoteca di Brera is located in the historic Palazzo di Brera, which also houses the National Library, the Observatory, the Botanical Garden, the Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere, and the Academy of Fine Arts. The palace and the surrounding district take their name from the ancient braida, meaning “suburban field.”
The museum’s 38 galleries showcase masterpieces by major Italian artists from the 14th to the 19th century—among them Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, Raphael, Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Bellini, and Bronzino. In the entrance courtyard stands Canova’s iconic statue of Napoleon I.
Highlights of the collection include Raphael’s The Marriage of the Virgin, Mantegna’s Dead Christ, and Bellini’s Pietà. The Pinacoteca also preserves an important archive of drawings, generally reserved for scholars, featuring works by Leonardo da Vinci and preparatory cartoons by Guido Reni and Ludovico Carracci. Notable as well is the Brera–Brambilla Tarot, part of the Visconti–Sforza series commissioned in 1463 by Francesco Sforza.
