The Brera

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

OK, couldn't let this one pass - -

Charlie (Pottree), saying that "The show car's name is no coincidence", writes
"OK, those who scoff at me when I say Alfas should be pushed to the hoi poloi
as fashion items more like Prada than Porsche: "Brera" is the quarter of
Milano where most of the fashion houses are, the textile and leather magnates,
the trendy clubs and eateries, and where the streets are literally packed with
the world's most beautiful models running off to interviews and fashion
shoots.  This is one of the places in Milano where you see industrial spies
photographing women's shoes in shop windows (I have seen this!!) and where
everyone has the very latest bags and eyeglasses.  Naturally, the official
colors are black (with red piping).  This tiny section of town is the fashion
and style nexus of the planet."

May well be so, I had never heard that, but probably wouldn't have; not my
sphere, I will take his word for it. Never the less, I found the choice of the
Brera name fascinating, and breathtaking in its audacity; it is known to me
from "The Brera", the universally recognized shorthand for the Pinacotecca di
Brera, the Brera Picture Gallery in Milan, (in a seventeenth-century palace)
which undoubtedly gave the fashionable quarter its name. The Brera has Italy's
finest collection of Renaissance paintings, the artwork of Italy's culturally
most significant period and most significant artists; the Vatican Museums in
Rome are collectively the only collection that ranks almost as highly in
general esteem among historians, thanks to a far smaller number of major works
like Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and the Stanze of Raphael, but neither the
Vatican nor any other Italian museum has anything like the cultural breadth
and depth of The Brera. There are individual works and small clusters of works
in innumerable other locations, but only one Brera. Thanks to the vagaries of
military prowess and wealth there are great collections of Italian art in
Paris, London, New York, Washington, Leningrad, but in Italy there is The
Brera, with more important Venetian work than there is in Venice, more
important Neapolitan work than there is in Naples, more of everything of truly
lasting greatness than there is anywhere else.

So, two possible reads. Charlie's Brera is the home turf of high fashion, the
most ephemeral, transitory, and superficial overpriced ego-tickles imaginable,
the surprising dress this year's hot star will wear once to this year's Big
Event, which will be unacceptably dated old New Thing in a few weeks, never to
be seen again except perhaps in trickle-downs on the racks at Wal-Mart. The
other Brera celebrates the enduring, timeless, priceless, classic works which
have been recognized, in time, as the very best things that a particular
civilization produced. In choosing that name for this car was Giugiaro
comparing himself to Gianni Versace or to Leonardo da Vinci? Perhaps
ambiguously both, your guess. If so, nice joke.

What artifacts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries will be in
someplace like the Brera in the twenty-sixth century, to represent The Golden
Age of Italian design? It seems to me that Giugiaro's best work, say the
Giulia coupes of the sixties, rose well above the trendiest fashion
accessories that the beautiful people undoubtedly wore to the motor shows
where those cars, and many very forgettable ones, were first presented. This
"Brera", which I understand was neither an Alfa initiative nor based on Alfa
running-gear, seems like one for the books, a worthy permanent enhancement of
the luster of its designer's reputation. YMMV.

Cheers

John H.

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