's statue of
Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker The origins of the palace lie in a monastery built on the lands of Guercio da Baggio, who may have been consul between 1150 and 1188. Shortly before 1178 it passed into the hands of the
Humiliati. The church of
Santa Maria in Brera (demolished in the 19th century) was built between 1180 and 1229; a
Gothic marble portal was added by the
Pisan sculptor
Giovanni di Balduccio between 1346 and 1348, and there were
frescoes by
Giovanni da Milano,
Vincenzo Foppa and
Bernardino Luini. 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. This grew to some 3000 students, and more space was needed. Between 1573 and 1590
Martino Bassi was engaged to design a new building on the lines of the
Collegio Borromeo in
Pavia. The present palace was built to designs of
Francesco Maria Richini from about 1615. 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. 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. In 1780
Giuseppe Piermarini completed the inner courtyard and built the imposing entrance from via Brera. The church of Santa Maria in Brera was
deconsecrated in 1806. After the
Napoleonic suppression of the convents in the early 19th century, the façade was torn down, and the nave of the church was divided horizontally; the upper floor became the Napoleonic rooms of the art gallery of the Accademia, and the lower floor housed the sculptures of the museum of antiquities. 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, was placed at the centre of the courtyard of the palace. ==Institutions in the palace==