A hundred years of the Amici di Brera: Milan’s finest patronage

The centenary exhibition of the Amici di Brera, which opened a few weeks ago at the Pinacoteca, is an excellent opportunity not only to see some masterpieces that are often on tour, but which, due to an objective lack of space, are never actually on display on the Pinacoteca’s overcrowded walls – for example, Guido Cagnacci’s languid, sensual Baroque Cleopatra, which was donated to the museum because the highly distinguished Milanese lady, a mother of many children, who at one point found it hanging on her wall, observed that, in a household of only men, those half-closed, quivering eyes simply could not be tolerated, and her husband resigned himself to parting with it – but also to observe how, in fact, by utilising the central area of the palace’s spacious halls with movable partitions and small display stands, exhibition spaces are created that make even the permanently exhibited works incredibly more accessible and appealing. These works are often, in turn, the result of donations, negotiations, and dramatic yet fascinating stories that bear witness to the foundational relationship between Brera, the city and its benefactors.

Among these works, which depict the virtuous relationship between the public and the private sphere a century before the concept became part of the repertoire of political clichés, are, for example, Giovani Segantini’s Spring Pastures and Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus, which became part of the Brera collection following lengthy negotiations with the Patrizi family and the decisive contribution of one of the association’s longest-serving presidents, Paolo Gerli of Villa Gaeta.

And this brings us to the point, namely that one cannot understand anything about Milan, its history and the reasons why its social fabric holds together despite the signs sent by last month’s devastation, the suburbs where libraries are being restored without a thought for how to attract people inside them, and an administration more accustomed to superficial cosmetic changes than to in-depth work – unless one delves into the nerve centres of that bourgeois, entrepreneurial and only partially aristocratic, which since the early nineteenth century has laid the foundations of solidarity and secular patronage around a highly concentrated yet very specific geographical and demographic area: La Scala, the Pinacoteca di Brera, the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, to which the Prada Foundation has been added in recent years for very good reasons. Alongside these institutions stands a dense network of supporters, ranging from ordinary members to trustees such as Francesca Luchi – who this year donated two monumental preparatory cartoons by Francesco Hayez and Pelagio Palagi to the Pinacoteca di Brera – and they not only enrich the collections but also propose and often fund projects and improvements.

Since 1926, the year the Associazione Amici di Brera was founded at the behest of Ettore Modigliani – the great art historian and superintendent forced to resign from his post following the enactment of the racial laws, and whose portrait, painted by Harold Knight during his stay in London for the major 1930 exhibition of Italian art at the Royal Academy of Arts (on display is a delightful memento of that adventure in which, due to Mussolini’s terrible idea of transporting priceless masterpieces by sea, disaster was narrowly averted), is one of this year’s major discoveries by the current president, the antiquarian Carlo Orsi; the association has had a relatively small number of leading figures, or rather, key figures. This is despite the fact that in 1939 it was suppressed by the Fascist regime and re-established a decade later by Fernanda Wittgens, the first director of Brera in the post-war period, who, whilst Modigliani was in exile, kept in constant contact with him to save the Pinacoteca during the war years.

Their names – from Ettore Conti to Lamberto Vitali, Aldo Bassetti and, indeed, Orsi, who was reappointed during the celebrations marking Brera’s 250th anniversary – appear in a series of diagrams reproduced at the bottom of each panel, and all demonstrate a long tenure except for one, that of Giulia Maria Crespi, who was in charge of the Amici di Brera for a very brief period between her time at the Corriere della Sera and the founding of the FAI, during which she is said to have shown a certain tendency to demand substantial donations. If you were to search for the dates of her presidency using AI, you would not find them. The catalogue, which will not only document the exhibition but also contribute to the cultural and civic history of Milan, is eagerly awaited.