Pinacoteca di Brera

Listen first to the courtyard. Footsteps carry across the stone, and voices rise and fall beneath two storeys of paired columns. Students cross with sketchbooks under their arms. The light falls softly on grey and ochre walls. In the middle of it all stands a bronze figure. He is naked, holding a small winged statue in one hand. This is the heart of the Palazzo di Brera, and the gallery waits on the floor above you.

Before we climb the stairs, a word about the name. Brera comes from an old Lombard word, braida, which meant an open, grassy field. Centuries ago, this was the edge of town. A religious order called the Humiliati settled here first. Later the Jesuits took over the site and built a college. The grand courtyard you see belongs to that Jesuit period. It was designed in the seventeenth century by the Milanese architect Francesco Maria Richini.

Now look again at the bronze man in the centre. He is Napoleon Bonaparte, shown as Mars, the Roman god of war, here cast as a bringer of peace. The original design is by Antonio Canova, the great Italian sculptor of the neoclassical style. That style copied the calm and the idealised bodies of ancient Greek and Roman art. Many visitors walk past without realising who he is. The connection is not an accident. Without Napoleon, this gallery would probably not exist.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Napoleon's armies controlled much of northern Italy. Milan became the capital of a new Napoleonic kingdom. The new government closed many churches and monasteries. Their paintings were gathered and sent here. The idea was to create a great national collection, in the spirit of the Louvre in Paris. The gallery opened to the public in 1809. That origin explains a lot about what you will see upstairs.

So here is the first surprise. Most of these paintings were never made for a museum. They were made for altars, chapels and church walls. Many of them were meant to be seen by candlelight, from below, during prayer. As you walk through the rooms, try to imagine them back in their first homes. The large altarpieces, in particular, make more sense when you picture a dim church around them.

The palace was never only a gallery. It still houses the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, so the students you saw are real art students. The building also holds a historic library, an astronomical observatory, and a small botanical garden behind the walls. Painting, science and study have shared these corridors for a very long time. The gallery is one part of a living institution.

Upstairs, one painting stops almost everyone. It is Andrea Mantegna's Lamentation over the Dead Christ, from the fifteenth century. Christ lies on a stone slab, and we see him from his feet. The angle is extreme, and the body seems to push towards us. This technique is called foreshortening. Look at the soles of the feet, with their wounds, close to your eyes. Then look at the grieving faces squeezed into the corner. The colours are muted, almost like stone.

Not far away is a quieter masterpiece by Piero della Francesca. It shows the Virgin and Child with saints, and a kneeling duke in shining armour. That duke is Federico da Montefeltro, ruler of Urbino. Above the Virgin's head, a single egg hangs from a shell-shaped niche. Scholars have argued for a long time about what the egg means. Some see a symbol of creation or birth. Nobody can say for certain, which is part of its charm.

Next, find Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin, painted in 1504 when the artist was still very young. Mary and Joseph exchange a ring in the foreground. Behind them, a round temple stands at the top of a wide square. Here is the second surprise. Look on the temple, above the central arch, for Raphael's name. He signed the building itself. A young painter was announcing that he had arrived.

The gallery also holds a painting by Caravaggio, the Supper at Emmaus. Caravaggio was famous for strong contrasts of light and dark. In this version, the light is softer and the mood is more inward than in his earlier treatment of the scene in London. The figures lean out of deep shadow. Their hands and faces catch the light. Stand still for a moment and let your eyes adjust to the darkness.

As you move through the rooms, watch for a space with glass walls. Behind the glass, restorers sometimes work on paintings in front of the public. Their tables, lamps and microscopes are in plain view. It is unusual to see this side of a museum. Conservation is usually hidden behind closed doors. Here you can watch the slow, careful work that keeps old pictures alive for the next generation.

Near the end of the visit, the mood changes completely. Francesco Hayez's The Kiss, from 1859, shows a young couple in a passionate embrace on a stone staircase. It became one of the most reproduced images in Italy. Many viewers read it as a picture about the struggle for Italian unity, which was happening at that time. Notice the man's foot on the step, ready to leave. And look closely at the folds of her silk dress.

When you come back down to the courtyard, pause for a moment beside Napoleon. The students are still crossing the stone. The narrow streets of the Brera neighbourhood wait outside the gate, with their cafés and small galleries. Carry one image with you as you leave. Perhaps it is the dead Christ's feet, or the hanging egg, or the silk dress. Then step back out into the Milan of today.