The story
In the Malchiostro Chapel, beside the high altar of Treviso's cathedral, two painters of the Venetian Renaissance share one small room. Around 1520 Broccardo Malchiostro, secretary to the bishop of Treviso, paid for the chapel and its decoration. Titian painted the altarpiece, an Annunciation that is still in place. Pordenone, the painter from Friuli who would later compete openly with Titian for commissions in Venice, covered the walls with frescoes, among them an Adoration of the Magi.
The cathedral is dedicated to Saint Peter and is primarily the working mother church of the diocese, with roots going back to the early Christian centuries. Much of what you see from the square is far younger. A rebuilding began in the eighteenth century under Giordano Riccati, a local architect, and the portico of Ionic columns across the front was finished only in 1836. Seven low domes crown the roof, and beneath the choir lies a Romanesque crypt.
Treviso was heavily bombed by the Allies in April 1944, and the cathedral was hit. Pordenone's frescoes in the Malchiostro Chapel were among the works damaged, including his scene of the Emperor Augustus and the Sibyl.
