FEDERICO BORROMEO'S PINACOTECA AMBROSIANA (BAROQUE, RENAISSANCE ART, MILAN, ITALY, MUSEUM HISTORY, COLLECTING)

This study concerns the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, which Cardinal Federico Borromeo donated to the city of Milan in 1618 as a teaching facility for his Accademia del Disegno. Borromeo's collection was rich in istorie of the Italian High Renaissance, casts of antique sculptures, and still lifes and landscapes by his Northern European contemporaries. The Cardinal wrote in the Pinacoteca's act of foundation (1618) that works of art in it were supposed to teach students in the academy how to reform modern sacred art.;Chapter 2 concerns Borromeo's practice of religious contemplation. It sheds light on the overall meaning of the collection, because it demonstrates that Borromeo found religious significance in all of his works, that is, in still lifes and landscapes as well as in istorie: he contemplated works of these genres. Thus, the still lifes and landscapes in the collection, which have been regarded as indicative of the Cardinal's purely secular taste, can now be seen as appropriate within his didactic sacred museum.;The collection's relation to the academy is the subject of Chapter 3. In it I discuss the academic function of the museum and how critical and theoretical developments of the era influenced the Cardinal's conception of it. In addition, I discuss at length Borromeo's responses to works in the collection as seen in his treatises De pictura sacra (1624) and Musaeum (1625).;In the final chapter I treat Borromeo's series of portraits of famous persons. Discussion of the portraits involves such issues as Borromeo's study of Chrisitan archeology in Rome, and his use of Early Christian and medieval images as models for academicians.;The foundation of my study is the complete catalogue that I have made of the Pinacoteca. This is preceded by a text of four chapters. The first chapter is a complement to the catalogue, in which I outline a series of distinct periods in Borromeo's collecting; this clarifies the motivations behind his acquisitions.;My research shows that Cardinal Federico Borromeo was a mainstream figure in artistic developments of the late Cinquecento and early Seicento.