The Pinacoteca di Brera was officially founded in 1809, although an initial heterogeneous collection of works had already existed since 1776 and was expanded in the following years for educational purposes, alongside the Academy of Fine Arts desired by Maria Theresa of Austria.
The corpus was intended to be a collection of exemplary works for the training of students. When Milan became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, at the behest of Napoleon, the collection was transformed into a museum to display the most important paintings from all the territories conquered by the French armies. Thus, unlike other great Italian museums such as the Uffizi, Brera did not originate from the private collection of princes and aristocrats, but from political and state collecting.
In fact, from the early sixteenth century, partly as a result of the suppression of many religious orders, paintings confiscated from Lombard churches and monasteries were added to the collection, along with works of identical provenance from the various departments of the Kingdom of Italy. This origin explains the predominance in the collections of sacred paintings, often of large format, and gives the museum a particular physiognomy, only partially mitigated by subsequent acquisitions.
Today, the Picture Gallery plays a decisive role in the Milanese art scene. Its permanent collection offers an exceptional heritage of Italian and foreign masterpieces: among others, Mantegna's Dead Christ, Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin, Caravaggio's Supper of Emmaus and Hayez's The Kiss.