The Pinacoteca di Brera is one of Italy’s most important museums, thanks to the sheer beauty of the works it holds. Housed in the palace of the same name, it gathers above all masterpieces by Lombard and Venetian artists, but also by masters from all over the peninsula.
The works of the Pinacoteca di Brera range from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. The palace takes its name from the land it stands on, the braida (or breda): in the Lombard language it meant an uncultivated, open field. The current building was raised in the 17th century over an old convent, to house the Jesuit college.
It was only under Napoleon that the building became a museum: in 1809 the first works arrived, many of them seized from suppressed churches and convents.
Today, walking through the rooms of the Pinacoteca di Brera, you feel as if you are retracing the history of art century by century. There are canvases by the greatest Italian artists: Bellini, Veronese, Raphael, Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Hayez and many more.
Want to discover the most important works of the Pinacoteca di Brera? I’ve chosen 8 that, in my opinion, you absolutely must see.
Shall we?
Let’s go!
Read also: Milan Cathedral: 7 essential things to know to visit it at its best
1 – The Flagellation of Christ, Luca Signorelli
Luca Signorelli painted this Flagellation of Christ together with the Nursing Madonna in Glory. They were not two separate paintings, but the two faces of a single processional standard, made around 1475 for the confraternity of the Raccomandati of Santa Maria del Mercato, in Fabriano. The two panels reached Brera already separated, after the Napoleonic suppressions of 1811.
You should know that the patrons practised self-flagellation to atone for their sins, but also cared for abandoned children. That is exactly why Signorelli chose to depict the flagellation on one side and the nursing Virgin, an age-old symbol of Christian charity, on the other.
The scene unfolds in a classicising landscape: in the background you can make out a richly carved and decorated triumphal arch. In Signorelli’s Flagellation of Christ the episode is perfectly balanced: Christ stands at the centre, bound to a column topped by a small bronze statue, while the other figures, intensely dynamic, move around him with muscles tensed in action.
What is so special about it?
The anatomy of Christ’s body, and that of his torturers, is simply flawless: no surprise, if you consider that Signorelli had trained under Piero della Francesca.
Look at the man to Christ’s right: he tightens the ropes that bind him, bracing his knee against the column in a gesture of great tension. In the same way, the back muscles of the figures in the foreground are rendered with enormous care and realism. Pontius Pilate, on the other hand, sits on a raised throne and wears contemporary clothes, like the other onlookers.
The Nursing Madonna too is shown twisting: she bares her breast to offer it to her child, a movement that forces her to raise one leg. Her figure feels even more dynamic thanks to the cherubs surrounding her.
In these two panels Signorelli shows a fully Renaissance language, with its references to the study of anatomy, antiquity and movement.
2 – The Dead Christ, Andrea Mantegna
You cannot visit the Pinacoteca di Brera without stopping to admire Mantegna’s Dead Christ. The work may date to 1475-1478, though its dating is much debated; what is certain is its astonishing mastery of perspective.
The innovation of Mantegna’s Dead Christ lies entirely in the viewpoint from which the scene is captured. The Saviour’s body is painted livid, in death, seen from the feet: a daring foreshortening that sets it before us in all its rawness.
The wounds are emphasised, as are the folds of the sheet that wraps the body in a light drapery. Beside him, three figures weep, yet they remain almost invisible next to the shock of the lifeless body.
I promise this painting will strike you deeply; among all the works of the Pinacoteca di Brera, it draws your eye from across the room.
Like Piero della Francesca’s Sacred Conversation, which I’ll tell you about shortly, this too is a Renaissance work that foregrounds the study of perspective and anatomy. Christ’s humanity, which brings him close to us, is rendered in its most raw features: the pallor, the open wounds, the composed abandon of death.
Mantegna’s Dead Christ is without doubt the most famous work by this extraordinary artist.
3 – Sacred Conversation, Piero della Francesca
This is one of the works I studied most closely during my university years. Seeing in person a painting you have analysed down to the smallest detail is a bit like finally meeting someone you have long heard about: you think you already know everything, and instead it surprises you every time.
However detailed the descriptions you’ve been given, you will always notice some small particular you could never have caught from photographs.
This Sacred Conversation at the Pinacoteca di Brera (also known as the Brera Altarpiece or Montefeltro Altarpiece, datable to around 1472) will first amaze you by its size: it is about two and a half metres tall. According to some scholars, such as Ragghianti, the panel was even trimmed at the sides and originally framed by lateral pilasters and a great arch: part of the work, in short, may have been lost.
It is one of those paintings where you sense a profound study of perspective. If you look closely, the whole composition is organised in circles, and the vanishing point falls right on the Virgin’s face. All around the Madonna and Child stand the saints, each with the marks of their martyrdom, and the angels. The figure kneeling on the right, in armour, is Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino and, most likely, the patron of the work.
Have you spotted that egg?
A curiosity: from the apse shell above hangs an ostrich egg, perfectly aligned with the oval face of the Virgin. It is one of the most debated details in the history of art: the egg was a Montefeltro heraldic emblem, but it is also an ancient symbol of creation and birth, an allusion to Mary’s motherhood.
If you’d like to go deeper, I’ve devoted a whole article to the Sacred Conversation by Piero della Francesca.
For me it was a wonderful emotion. I’m sure it will be for you too.
4 – The Marriage of the Virgin, Raphael
If someone asks you what to see at the Pinacoteca di Brera, you could answer with just one title: “Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin”.
This work, signed and dated 1504, was painted for the church of San Francesco in Città di Castello and is stunningly beautiful. The Virgin is shown at the very moment when Saint Joseph slips the wedding ring onto her finger: behind her the young women, behind the groom the other suitors.
According to a legend tied to the Marriage of the Virgin, every one of young Mary’s suitors had been given a rod, awaiting a divine sign: only Joseph’s blossomed. That is why, in the foreground, one of the suitors snaps his now useless rod over his knee.
What you may not know is that a “copy” of the Marriage of the Virgin exists, painted by Raphael’s own master, Perugino: it hangs at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen, in Normandy. In truth it is the other way round: it was Raphael who drew on his mentor’s painting to tackle the same subject, with a similar layout but in his own personal style. The two works resemble each other, yet differ in countless details.
The atmosphere, as always in his paintings, is one of great harmony: the splendid colours bring out every detail of the fabrics, the accessories, the landscape in the background. At the centre rises a temple with a central plan, echoing the architectural ideals of the mature Renaissance, such as the Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio by his fellow countryman Bramante. The temple’s doorway, open onto the landscape, is the vanishing point: the perspective is reinforced by the floor and the steps.
If you compare the two works, you realise that here the pupil truly surpassed the master.
5 – The works of Hayez
If you were only thinking of the famous Kiss by Hayez, I’m sorry to disappoint you. As much as The Kiss (1859) is his most famous work, this artist left many other paintings of great beauty, several of them right here.
Francesco Hayez was in fact one of the leading figures of Romanticism in Italy. Among his works kept at the Pinacoteca di Brera is the portrait of Alessandro Manzoni (1841): if it looks familiar, it’s because it ended up on the covers of countless editions of The Betrothed.
At the Pinacoteca di Brera you can also admire Melancholy (Malinconia), the dramatic Pietro Rossi, and the late Vase of Flowers on the Window of a Harem, which Hayez painted in 1881, a year before his death, and chose to bequeath to the museum itself.
Hayez’s painting has the power to move and amaze, thanks to its strong tones, the realism of its scenes and the characterisation of its figures. They look like snapshots arrived from far away.
A curiosity: much of Hayez’s work, The Kiss included, can also be read through a Risorgimento lens. Hayez was a convinced supporter of Italian unity, and in his works he often hid details alluding to the national cause.
6 – Pietà, Giovanni Bellini
There is one work at Brera in front of which I always fall silent: the Pietà by Giovanni Bellini, a tempera on panel datable to around 1465-1470. It shows the dead Christ held up by the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist, three half-length figures behind a parapet, so close they seem within reach.
There is nothing theatrical here: only a restrained grief. The Virgin’s cheek brushes her son’s, while Saint John looks away like someone who cannot bear the scene. It is one of the most moving moments in all 15th-century painting.
And do you know the most beautiful detail?
A curiosity: on the marble parapet, at the bottom, Bellini carved a Latin couplet inspired by Propertius’ Elegies: “HAEC FERE QVVM GEMITVS TVRGENTIA LVMINA PROMANT / BELLINI POTERAT FLERE IOANNIS OPVS”, that is “When these swollen eyes give out groans, this work of Giovanni Bellini could weep”. It is as if the painter were comparing the grief of the figures to the weeping of painting itself, asking you, the viewer, to be moved along with them.
7 – The Finding of the Body of Saint Mark, Tintoretto
If there is one painting at Brera that sends a shiver down your spine, it’s Tintoretto’s Finding of the Body of Saint Mark, an enormous canvas (almost four metres) painted between 1562 and 1566 for the Scuola Grande di San Marco in Venice, commissioned by its Guardian Grande, the physician Tommaso Rangone.
The scene tells of the search for Saint Mark’s remains in a church in Alexandria, in Egypt. On the left, the saint appears in a ghostly light and, with a gesture, points to his own body, already found, lying on the ground in a daring foreshortening. At the centre, kneeling in his toga, is Rangone himself, the patron.
What makes it so modern?
The dizzying perspective: the arcades of the church rush off obliquely to the left, stretching the space in an almost cinematic way. The lights flash in the darkness as in a scene of theatre.
A curiosity: the traditional title comes from a misunderstanding. It was Carlo Ridolfi who, in 1648, read the scene as a “finding”: in reality Tintoretto was combining several miraculous episodes linked to the saint. The name, however, has stuck.
8 – The Supper at Emmaus, Caravaggio
I’ve saved for last the painting that leaves me breathless every time: Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus, an oil on canvas of 1606. It is the moment from Luke’s Gospel when the two disciples recognise the risen Christ just as he blesses and breaks the bread.
You may not know that an earlier version of the same subject exists, from 1601, now at the National Gallery in London. Yet the two canvases could not be more different. The London one is luminous, rich, almost opulent; this one at Brera is dark, bare, nearly monochrome, played out entirely in ochres and browns. Christ is no longer the beardless youth of London, but a grown man, weary, his face marked.
Why such a radical change?
A curiosity: Caravaggio painted the Brera Supper at Emmaus shortly after fleeing Rome, where he had killed Ranuccio Tomassoni in a duel. He made it on the Colonna estates, between Palestrina and Zagarolo, while he was by then a wanted man with a price on his head. That grief, that shadowy sobriety, seem to speak of his own life as a fugitive, which would end four years later, in 1610, on the beach of Porto Ercole. If you’d like to know him better, I’ve written about him in my article on Caravaggio’s paintings.
Visiting the Pinacoteca di Brera: practical information
So, have I convinced you to visit the Pinacoteca di Brera?
I almost feel guilty, because there are so many other masterpieces that deserved a place on this list, but including them all would be impossible. Remember that this is just my personal selection: visiting the museum, you will surely find many other works to fall in love with.
The Pinacoteca di Brera is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 8.30am to 7.15pm (last entry at 6pm) and is closed on Mondays. Entry is free on the first Sunday of every month (with reservation) and always for under-18s.
The full ticket costs 20 euros, the reduced one (ages 18-25) 4 euros. Entries run on a timed basis: on busy days it’s worth booking your ticket online, so you skip the security queue and enter at the time you prefer.
One detail worth knowing: it’s the Grande Brera ticket. Since December 2024 it also covers the nearby Palazzo Citterio, where the 20th-century collection has been moved, that is the Emilio and Maria Jesi and Enrico Vitali collections, with works by Boccioni, Modigliani, Morandi, Carrà, Picasso and Braque. You can visit it on the same day or within the following six: if you love modern art, don’t miss it.
One last curiosity, before we say goodbye: even before you step into the gallery, stop in the middle of the courtyard of honour. The great bronze statue that dominates it is Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker by Antonio Canova. The marble original is in London (it was given to the Duke of Wellington, the victor of Waterloo); this bronze, cast from the metal of old cannons, was placed here in 1859. A final tribute to the man to whom Brera owes its birth as a museum.
If after Brera you want to keep discovering the city, here’s my guide to Milan Cathedral: the perfect complement to a day of art in Milan.
