FRESCOÂ ADORATION OF THE MAGI
The frescoes of Pordenone, the Adoration of the Magi and the Visitation, present in the Malchiostro Chapel of the Cathedral of Treviso, are respectively on the left and above wall. In the apse, instead, we find the Vision of Augustus, fresco damaged by the bombing of 1944. The Pordenone impetuously defined these images with large masses of color in the fresh memory of the Volta Sistina demonstrating an early mannerism, the first contact of Venetian art with that of the sixteenth century Roman.
The Adoration of the Magi was commissioned by the Malchiostro, in fact, for the fame of which Pordenone enjoyed in order to exalt, through the sacred representation, important figures in Treviso: the Bishop Bernardo Dè Rossi who is recognized in the figure of the king more young to the left from the dark mantle. The canonical Malchiostro and Priamo da Lezze, at the time podestà of Treviso, are presumed to be depicted in the other two Magi also because they are clearly visible in the background the emblems Dè Rossi.
On the stone die, on which the Madonna offers the Child to adoration, it is possible to read an inscription “Under the care and expense of Brocardo Malchiostro, Canonico Trevisano, Giovanni Antonio Cornicello painted in 1520”
The gifts that the painter has put in the hands of the Magi represent objects kept in the treasure of the Cathedral now on display at the Diocesan Museum.
