Palazzo Brera

[2]: 251 After the suppression of the Humiliati by Pius V on 7 February 1571, the monastery became – at the request of Carlo Borromeo and with the approval of Gregory XIII – a Jesuit college.

[2]: 251  Work began in 1627, but was interrupted by the plague outbreak of 1630, and was resumed only in 1651; after Richini died in 1658, it was continued by his son Gian Domenico.

[3]: 8 Following the suppression of the Jesuits by Clement XIV on 21 July 1773, the palace passed to the then rulers of northern Italy, the Austrian Habsburg dynasty.

[2]: 252 In 1859 a bronze copy of Antonio Canova's statue of Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker, cast in Rome in 1811 by Francesco Righetti and his son Luigi,[5]: 266 [6]: 200  was placed at the centre of the courtyard of the palace.

[1] The palace also housed the Scuole Palatine for philosophy and law, the Gymnasium, laboratories for physics and chemistry, and the Società Patriottica, an agricultural society.

The courtyard, with a bronze copy of Antonio Canova 's statue of Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker