Brera Pinacoteca, Milan--Top 10 Masterpieces
Visiting the Galleria Accademia in Venice, normally considered the greatest art museum in Northern Italy, one is immediately struck by the general sense of decay and disarray -- whole rooms are even closed to the public and God-only-knows how long it may take for it to match the splendor of the recently renovated and expanded Brera Pinacoteca in Milan.
Although the Brera collection warrants a Top 100, here's a Top 10 list of masterpieces not to be missed (and look for an additional Top 10 list, "Brera Offbeat: The Other Side of the Old Masters").
1. Giovanni Bellini/ Madonna and Child (1510): Late period Bellini and "late" means luminous, melting colors with the central figures cushioned by a lush, placid dreamscape landscape.
2. Andrea Mantegna/ The Dead Christ: The famed foreshortening of the dead Christ's body --- haunting, stark, almost monochromatic, virtuosic.
3. Piero della Francesca/ Brera Altarpiece: A Virgin-Child-Saints "sacra conversazione" renowned for its ornate architectural setting with its seashell ceiling, the muted, silvery colors, its aura of mystic space.
4. Raphael/ Marriage of the Virgin: A fresh and refined, beautifully balanced masterwork --- all controlled sweetness and structure.
5. Luca Signorelli/ Flagellation: Signorelli's "miniature" is intricately detailed yet the effect is smudged, rushed, horrifying.
6. Caravaggio/ Supper at Emmaus: The gravity, the gestures and the darkness --- Caravaggio's guess-who's-coming-to-dinner mystery.
7. Tintoretto/ The Finding of the Body of St. Mark: One of a series; the viewer is struck by the dramatic poses, the sheen of the night, the deepening space --- we're sucked into a nightmare.
8. Donato Bramante/ Christ at the Column: The Renaissance architect's take on Jesus Christ as human being. Rugged torso, vulnerable everyman's face --- bold and iconic.
9. Annibale Carracci/ The Samaritan Woman at the Well: A magical rendering, pure storybook art. Formal and elegant yet spacious, graceful, sensual.
10. Veronese/Christ in the Garden of Gethsemene: That master of epic decoration doing an unusually lyrical, intimate nocturne (but don't miss the dazzling, grandiose "Supper in the House of Simon").
