Theft of Rare Antonello da Messina Paintings Highlights Museum Security Vulnerabilities

Theft of four works on national holiday described as wound to historical memory and cultural identity of city of Messina Four of the most important works of art by the 15th-century Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen during a national holiday from a museum in the Sicilian port city of Messina. Thieves gained access to the Regional Museum of Messina , or MuMe, on Saturday evening, possibly capitalising on attention being focused on La Vara, a huge religious festival that takes place in the city on 15 August, when Italy marks the Ferragosto national holiday. Bypassing the alarm systems, the gang broke into a security display box and stole four wood panels painted by Antonello, who is widely credited with changing the course of Renaissance art . Thieves took three of the five surviving panels that made up an altarpiece known as the Polittico di San Gregorio , one of the Sicilian painter’s most important works. “It is an extremely serious and significant loss,” said Marisa Mercurio, the director of the museum. “They have stolen works of enormous cultural, artistic and symbolic importance, not only for Messina but for Sicily as a whole. All we can do now is hope they are recovered as soon as possible.” Originally composed of six panels created for the Monastero di San Gregorio, which was destroyed in the 1908 Messina earthquake, the altarpiece was the only work by th

Four paintings by the Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museum in Messina, Sicily, on Saturday, Italian officials said. Taking advantage of an annual religious celebration that brings tens of thousands to Messina’s streets, thieves made off with three of five panels that constitute the Polyptych of San Gregorio as well as a small double-sided devotional painting . They are the only works by Antonello da Messina, commonly called Antonello, that remained in his native city. The celebration, the Procession of the Vara, is a religious ritual that takes places every Aug. 15. Some 100,000 people attended the celebration and the city’s law enforcement officials were focused

See more of our coverage in your search results. A gang of brazen art thieves made off with four Renaissance paintings of “extraordinary value” from an Italian museum over the weekend, local officials said. Altogether, the crooks nabbed six panels from the Museo Regionale di Messina in Sicily, but abandoned two as they fled on Saturday night, reports said. Italian Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli said the pieces, which date to the 15th-century, had “extraordinary value for our cultural heritage,” as he expressed his “dismay and regret” over the heist, according to the BBC . The value of the stolen works was estimated at between $81-$92 million by art expert Alberto Fiz, a prominent Italian curator. The thieves were able to bypass alarms and security systems at the museum as crowds gathered across Messina to celebrate Ferragosto, an annual major religious holiday marking the feast of the Assumption of Mary. They targeted works attributed to Antonello da Messina, a towering figure of the Italian Renaissance whose paintings are considered extraordinarily rare. Notably missing were the artist’s “San Gregorio” polyptych and a tiny, double-sided “Madonna and Child” panel that was acquired by the Sicilian government in 2003 for $300,000. The “San Gregorio” altarpiece was created around 1473 and is famous for being the only surviving work by the painter to have remained in its nati

The paintings had been stolen from a private museum near the northern city of Parma, the same city in which they were found during a search of a flat, wrapped in sheets. The three recovered paintings are “Fish” by Auguste Renoir, “Still Life with Cherries” by Paul Cézanne, and “Odalisque on the Terrace” by Henri Matisse. A journalist browses the Messina museum website showing a picture of the Early Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina’s artwork where three of the five panels belonging to the Polyptych of San Gregorio and the double-sided panel with the Madonna and the Christ in Pietà, stolen from the Sicilian museum on Aug. 15, in Rome, Sunday, Aug. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) MILAN (AP) — Thieves stole four works attributed to Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina worth millions of euros from the regional museum in the city of Messina in Sicily while crowds gathered across town for the traditional Assumption holiday celebrations, cultural officials and Italian media said Sunday. The thieves bypassed alarm and security systems on Saturday evening at the MuMe museum, making off with three of the five surviving panels of the San Gregorio Polyptych, dated to 1473, as well as the double-sided panel depicting the Virgin Mary and the dead Christ in Pietà, which was removed from an armored display case, the news agency LaPresse reported. They removed all five panels of

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