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Pinacoteca Ambrosiana

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Introduction
History
Location

ATTRACTIONS

Art Works
Ambrosian Library

INFORMATION

Useful information
Links

Introduction

This is Milan's oldest museum, is one of the city's treasures. It is home to some masterpieces by artists such as Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaello and Botticelli. The Ambrosiana also houses an important library, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, that dates from 1609, and is thought to be the oldest public library in Italy which contains some ancient codes, illuminated manuscripts, and ancient books.

History

The Gallery was first conceived in 1607, and came into being in 1618. In accordance with the intentions of its founder, Federico Borromeo, the Gallery was created to support and serve as a model for an art Academy aimed at the formation and education of aesthetic tastes, in conformity with the dictates of the Council of Trent.

The Academy was founded in 1621, and its first chairman was the painter Giovan Battista Crespi known as Cerano. This new institution flourished at the beginning, attracting such illustrious architects, painters and sculptors, as Biffi, Mangone, Morazzone, Daniele Crespi and Nebbia. Later, the art academy faltered, finally closing in 1776.

What did remain, however, and continued to develop, was the Quadreria (Picture Gallery) At that time, the Quadreria already included works by Raphael Leonardo, Luini, Titian, Caravaggio, and Brueghel which formed the nucleus of the present-day collection. At the time of the donation in 1618, there were 250 paintings, including originals and about 30 copies. Now there are more than 1500 works on panel, canvas and copper.

In the course of the 19th century the Gallery underwent a series of reconstructions due mainly to the extension of the building and the damage caused by Allied bombing in 1943. Work carried out in 1905-6, under the auspices of Luca Beltrami, Antonio Grandi and Luigi Cavenaghi is to be noted as well as the reorganization carried out in 1963 by the architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni ending with the reconstruction undertaken between 1990 and 1997.

Location

Address: Piazza Pio XI, 2, Milan 20123
Transit: Underground: Subway Line 1 (red) or Line 3 (yellow) and get off at Duomo station or Line 1 (red) and get off at Cordusio station.

Art Works

The collection of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana includes many paintings of the Lombard and Venetian school. Raphael's preparatory drawing for The School of Athens that hangs in the Vatican, Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit prescient in its realism, Jacopo Bassano's Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Portrait of a Lady by Ambrogio de Predis, the Madonna of the Pavilion by Botticelli, the Presepe by Barocci, the Adoration of the Magi, by Titian, the Holy Family by Luini, and Fire and Water by Brueghel hang alongside paintings attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis and a noteable collection of designs by some of the great masters.

Ambrosian Library

Named after Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan, it was founded by Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564-1631), whose agents scoured Western Europe and even Greece and Syria for books and manuscripts. Some major acquisitions of complete libraries were the manuscripts of the Benedictine monastery of Bobbio (1606) and the library of the Paduan Vincenzo Pinelli, whose more than 800 manuscripts filled 70 cases when they were sent to Milan and included the famous illuminated Iliad, the Ilia Picta.

When its first reading room, the Sala Fredericiana, opened to the public, December 8, 1609, it was only the second public library in Europe, after the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Prized manuscripts, including the Leonardo codices, were requisitioned by the French during the Napoleonic occupation, and only partly returned after 1815. Cardinal Borromeo gave his collection of paintings and drawings to the library too. Shortly after the cardinal's death his library acquired twelve manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci, including the Codex Atlanticus. Among the manuscripts is the Muratorian fragment, of ca 170 A.D., the earliest example of a Biblical canon.

The Library has a college of Doctors, similar to the scriptors of the Vatican Library. Among prominent figures have been Giuseppe Ripamonti, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Giuseppe Antonio Sassi, Cardinal Angelo Mai and, at the beginning of the 20th century, Antonio Maria Ceriani, Achille Ratti, the future Pope Pius XI, and Giovanni Mercati.

Useful information

Telephone: 39 02 80 692 1
Fax: 39 02 80 692 210
Email: info@ambrosiana.it
Open: Tuesday to Sunday from 10.00 a.m. to 5.30 p.m
Closed: January 1, Easter day, May 1, December 25th.
Disabled: The Reading Room of the Library and the most important rooms of the Gallery are accessible to the disabled.

Links

Offical site

The Ambrosian Library on the Catholic Encyclopedia

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