Milan Gallery of Modern Art – GAM

The nineteenth-century collection of the Milan Gallery of Modern Art.

GAM, the largest municipal collection in Milan of works of art from the 19th century, houses great masterpieces of Modern Art, ranging from Neoclassicism to Scapigliatura, from the Romantic season to Divisionism and late 20th-century Symbolism. A collection that grew between the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th thanks to numerous donations from private Milanese citizens and that has found its ideal home in the neoclassical residence of the Villa Reale since 1920. Extending the exhibition, which is rich in paintings and sculptures, the Grassi and Vismara collections make this immense artistic heritage even more precious, with objects belonging to different non-European cultures, precious carpets and notable works of 20th-century art. The host artist of our guided tour is Francesco Hayez, the painter of the famous Kiss preserved at the Pinacoteca di Brera, but who will surprise us here with his sharp portraits, including the Ritratto ad Alessandro Manzoni, the writer who most left his mark on the city of Milan. Alongside Hayez, many big names attested in the collections of the GAM in Milan: Molteni, Bianchi, Knoller; the Divisionist master Giovanni Segantini; the very modern Boldini and De Nittis, receivers of the novelties of late 19th-century French painting. Thanks to the narration of our guides, it will be easy to appreciate the great artists, themes and styles of an era distinguished by its inexhaustible creativity, a hotbed of ideas and experimentation that prepared the advent of the 20th-century avant-gardes.

The Royal Villa that houses the museum

But our guided tour of Milan’s Gallery of Modern Art could not be said to have ended without a look at the venue that houses it: the Villa Reale on Via Palestro, also known by the name Villa Belgiojoso Bonaparte, a testament to its history. Built by Count Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso during Austrian rule, it later passed into French hands, until it housed the viceroy of Italy Eugene de Beauharnais, adopted son of Napoleon Bonaparte. Built in neoclassical style to a design by architect Leopold Pollack between 1790 and 1796, it retains a splendid decorative apparatus (culminating in frescoes by Andrea Appiani) and hides, beyond the front facing Via Palestro, a garden that is itself an incredible work of art. In the Garden of Villa Reale, designed by Ercole Silva in the typical English garden style, our tour guides will show you fascinating sculptures such as Laura’s Sarcophagus, Count Ugolino’s Tower, the Temple of the Fates, and Adolf Wildt‘s The Wisdom. The view of the Villa Reale from the center of the garden gives a picturesque touch to our guided tour, evoking, in continuity with GAM’s collections, all the refinement that was characteristic of the nineteenth-century season.