Page 62 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Milan & The Lakes

60  MILAN AREA B Y AREA

Exploring the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana

After seven years of painstaking restoration work, the
Pinacoteca was reopened in October 1997. It is housed in
a palazzo originally designed by Fabio Mangone in 1611. It
was enlarged in the 19th century and again in 1932, when
San Sepolcro was added. The new rooms were inaugurated
on the third centenary of the death of Federico Borromeo,
when about 700 paintings were exhibited, arranged in rows
or set on easels. Today the Pinacoteca, whose collections are
even larger thanks to donations, has 24 rooms and is one of
Milan’s finest museums.

the far left, while animals and
The Borromeo Collection, minor figures fill the right-hand Portrait of a Young Man, attributed
15th–16th-Century half of this original composition. to Giorgione
Paintings On the opposite wall is a
The visit begins in the atrium, series of portraits, including kneeling and offering
which has plaster casts of Profile of a Lady by Ambrogio a soul to the Christ Child.
Trajan’s Column, narrating the De Predis, and those of The Room 4 has copies from
emperor’s victories against Young Jesus with Lamb and Titian and Giorgione and the
the Dacians; on the staircase Bene dictory Christ by Luini, Rest on the Flight into Egypt,
there are other casts of the ending with Titian’s Man in traditionally attributed to
Laocoön and Michelangelo’s Armour. Rooms 2 and 3 Jacopo Bassano (c.1547). In
Pietà. Rooms 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 have works acquired after room 5 is a Raphael study for
house the Borromeo Collection, 1618. They include Botticelli’s The School of Athens, the only
which boasts many of the Madonna del Padiglione, great Renaissance
best-known works in the with its many cartoon that has
gallery. Room 1, which features symbols of come down
Venetian and Leonardo-esque the Virgin to us. It was
painting, opens with the Holy Mary, and purchased
Family with St Anne and the Sacred by Cardinal
Young St John the Baptist by Conversation Borromeo in
Bernardino Luini (c.1520). by Bergognone 1626. Raphael
Next to this is Titian’s Adoration (c.1485). executed the
of the Magi (1559–60), which Another cartoon in 1510
is still in its original frame unmissable work as a study for his
bearing the carved initials is Adoration of marvellous fresco
of Henry II of France and his the Child, by Adoration of the Child, Domenico in the Vatican.
wife, who commissioned the the work shop Ghirlandaio’s workshop The fresco’s
work. The main scene is at of Domenico architectonic
Ghirlandaio. Room 3 setting and figure of Heraclitus
features 15th–16th- (portrayed with Michel angelo’s
century Leonardo- face) are not seen in the
esque and Lombard cartoon because Raphael only
paintings, among added them when, halfway
which is Salaino’s through painting, he got a
St John the Baptist, glimpse of the Sistine Chapel
whose finger pointing and was deeply impressed.
upwards alludes to The large body of Flemish
the coming of Christ. paintings in the Borromeo
Next to this are three Collection is on display in room
works by Bartolomeo 7, where you can compare
Suardi, known as the works of Paul Bril and Jan
“il Bramantino”. In Brueghel. Landscape with
his Madonna of the St Paul is the most dramatic
Towers (which may of the several Bril works on
have had an anti- display. Bril worked with the
heretic function), early 17th-century’s most
next to the Virgin are popular sacred scenes, but
Holy Family with St Anne and the Young St John the St Ambrose and St set them in his beloved,
Baptist by Bernardino Luini Michael Archangel intricately executed landscape

060-061_EW_Milan.indd 60 20/10/16 3:19 pm
Eyewitness Travel LAYERS PRINTED:
Catalogue template “UK” LAYER
(Source v2.7)
Date 1st October 2013
Size 125mm x 217mm