Milan – Brera Academy i okolice
North of La Scala, Via Brera, with its small galleries and art selling points, sets the tone for this bohemian quarter of the city. However, there is nowhere any trace of an atmosphere of artistic neglect. Via Brera is a wealthy district, which is reflected in the prices, in cafes and in the elegance of these, who can afford to sit at tables outside. Still, take a stroll through the streets west of Via Brera and the shopping district to the southeast., if only for this, to take a look at, how well-to-do Milanese are looking for the perfect objet d'art for their sketchbooks.
At the end of Via Brera, Milan's most prestigious art gallery, Accademia Brera (Tue-Sat. 9.00-18.00, Pt. i sb. 9.00-13.30, Nd. 9.00-12.30; 4000L) takes its name from the surrounding district. The founder of the gallery was Napoleon (the opening took place in a year 1809), which filled the building with works of art looted from churches and private collections of aristocratic Italian families. It is a gallery of good, for sure the best in Milan, but it is also very large and therefore if you do not plan to visit it multiple times, you'd better be very selective about it, guided by your own taste.
How easy it is to guess, most of the paintings in the museum are Italian paintings, and it is from before the 20th century. There are also works of contemporary art in Brera, including. paintings by Modigliani, De Chirico i Cara, but this renaissance painting is the core of the collection. There are many works by Venetian masters, m.in. Bonifacio and Paolo Veronese, who operated a hundred years later. From the works of the latter, the museum has a Supper at Simon's house, image, through which the artist came into conflict with the Inquisition, who protested against the inclusion of inappropriate religious content in a painting, in her opinion, running animals and disobedient children. Painted in the 1660s, The Picture of Tintoretto's Cross, in accordance with the convention in force at the time, simpler in means of expression and presents a scene of painful recollection and despair over the body of Christ. Sermon and in. Mark in St.. Bellini's Euphemia by Gentile introduces a more exotic tone, for the square is full of men in turbans, veiled women and camels (there is even a giraffe). Brera also has images of Gentile's successor, Carpaccia, Mary's visit to the temple and Speech i. Stephen, and the work of the more talented brother Gentile on display in the museum, Giovanni, The Pieta was recognized as "one of the most touching paintings in the history of art”.
It is also worth looking at the work of Bellini's brother-in-law, Mantegny, Christ the Dead. It is not so much a masterpiece, every exercise of painting skills, but very ingenious: Christ lying on a wooden ball is seen from the side of his wrinkled and pierced feet. Crivelli's works, even though created in the same period, are completely different. Its excellent, Pale Madonna, they are embedded in a fairy-tale, hermetically cut off from reality and the destructive influence of time, world.
There are even more good paintings in the next rooms. Piero della Francesca's Madonna, chilled in mood, surrounded by saints and angels with the kneeling figure of Prince Federigo da Montefeltro, is the most famous of them. But they are also beautiful: typically Renaissance in its transparency and grace of the Wedding of Our Lady of Raphael and contrasting with it, painted one hundred years later, posępna, a scene by Caravaggio, Christ in Emmaus, realistically located in a dark tavern. Less known, but just as realistic are the images of the perfect 18th-century Lombard realist, Cerutiego. He was known as the Second Pitochetto (Beggar), because of his then unpopular sympathy for the poor, who look down from his canvases reproachfully, but also with dignity. As its main popularizer said, Roberto Longhi, his characters are "dangerously larger than the real ones."” and it is not easy to match them with "eye-pleasing salon decorations."”.
Northeast of the cathedral: parks and other galleries
Intersecting with Via Brera, Via Fatebenefratelli leads east to the Museo del Risorgimento in Milan on Via Borgonuovo. (III-X 9.30-12.30 i 14.30-17.30; XI-II 9.30-12.30 i 14.30-17.00; closed. pn.; Free entrance). A skillfully displayed collection of paintings, proclamation, newspaper clippings and photos give a picture of the whole process of Italian unification, though, as in the case of other museums of this type, to appreciate its quality, you need a good knowledge of Italian history and language.
Continue along Via Fatebenefratelli, next to the very busy Piazza Cavour, it begins designed by Piermarini right after completing La Scala, one of the oldest parks in the city of Giardini Pubblici. Shady alleys and a small lake of this park, slightly changed in the 19th century to make it more rural, they are the perfect place, to take a break from sightseeing and exhaust.
On the left side of the park, in the basement of Palazzo Dugnani, milan's Museo del Cinema is located (Tue-Fri. 15.00-18.00; 2000L), which has a set of cameras without descriptions, machinery for cutting film and other, from the early days of the film, Hardware. The curator strongly encourages you to buy the catalog, but in fact, free leaflets are quite enough, and the museum is not so interesting.
More interesting and deviating in its slight mood than other museums in the city is located on the first floor Spazio Baj (Tue-Sun. 9.30-12.30 i 14.30-17.30; Free entrance), dedicated to the work of the contemporary Milanese artist Enrico Baj. Kept in simple colors, the sculptures at the entrance similar to Lego blocks set the tone of the entire exhibition, which includes, among others. portrait for. Man Without Lollipop (A man without a lollipop), a general-robot head made of various objects of military origin and embedded in plastic, and a series of collages composed of paint, trinkets, kart, braids and badges under the name Personaggi (Personalities). There are also aquatintes to the painting Hunting for Snark and illustrations to Paradise Lost. On one of them, in a world that is a combination of Picasso's Hell and Disneyland, inhabited by monsters similar to ET, Adam's bleeding heart is placed on the wall. For amateurs of more conventional art, in Villa Reale opposite the park, houses one of the nicest galleries in Milan, Civic Gallery of Modern Art (Wed-Mon. 9.30-12.30 i 14.30-17.30; Free entrance). Main building of this former Napoleon residence, now also housing a population register office, contains works of 19th-century Italian painting and sculpture, including. paintings by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, striking with their political content, images belonging to a specific style, the romantic scapigliati movement ("Raised”) from the end of the 19th century, shocking sculptures by Marino Marini, as well as a selection of slightly less ambitious Corot paintings, Millet and various French Impressionists. It is also worth taking a look at the futuristic works, m.in. Boccioniego, Balia and Morandi.
In the garden there is a showroom of the prestigious national and international exhibitions of contemporary art Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea (Wed-Mon. 9.30-18.30; Free entrance). In bright, a spacious outbuilding overlooking the garden houses the small Collezione Vismara, which is painted with charcoal, simple in its spontaneity (there are also the artist's fingerprints on it) Picasso's drawing Fight of the Centaurs and the Lesser Known, but striking work by Matisse, Dufy and contemporary Italian artists.
On the right from Giardini Pubblici (facing Corso Venezia) is the last of a series of museums in this district, Civic Museum of Natural History (Tue-Sun. 9.30-12.30 i 14.30-17.30; Free entrance). It is considered Italy's best natural history museum, but watching stuffed animals and dinosaur remains is better to leave for one of the frequent rainy afternoons in Milan.