The story
In 1883 the old church of Santa Margherita in Treviso was about to come down, and Luigi Bailo, a local scholar who ran the city library, realised what would go with it. On its walls was a fresco cycle by Tomaso da Modena, a 14th-century painter who worked in the town. Bailo won two months' grace, and two craftsmen lifted the paintings from the plaster and fixed them onto new supports.
Those ten scenes of the life of Saint Ursula, the legendary princess martyred with her companions at Cologne, are now shown in the deconsecrated church of Santa Caterina, the heart of this museum complex. The old convent buildings around it hold Treviso's civic picture gallery, founded in 1851, with works by Giovanni Bellini, Lorenzo Lotto and Cima da Conegliano, and an archaeological section.
Among the portraits is Titian's likeness of Sperone Speroni, a writer and scholar from nearby Padua. In 2021 it went on loan to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and for those months Treviso hung a portrait of a doge by Bernardo Strozzi in its place.
