Albino Luciani Diocesan Museum

On the top floor of the episcopal seminary in Ceneda, the old bishop's quarter of Vittorio Veneto, hangs a damaged altarpiece by Titian. The leading citizens of Castello Roganzuolo, a village in the same diocese, commissioned it in 1543 for the high altar of their church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and it was installed in 1549. The parish accounts record part of the payment, which included building a villa for the painter on the nearby hill of Col di Manza. Three tall, round-topped sections show the Madonna and Child between the two apostles, a format that was already old-fashioned at the time.

During the First World War, with Austrian troops in the area, the parish priest Giovanni Pizzinato hid the painting in the church attic. The damp there ruined much of its colour. After restoration it came to this museum, and a copy now stands in the village church in the original frame.

The museum grew out of that kind of rescue. Albino Luciani, bishop of Vittorio Veneto from 1958 to 1969 and later Pope John Paul I, began gathering endangered works from the churches of the diocese. Beside the Titian are paintings by the Renaissance masters Cima da Conegliano, Pordenone and Pomponio Amalteo.