Renaissance Paintings of ‘Extraordinary Value’ Stolen from Italian Museum

Four works of “extraordinary value” by the 15th-century Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museum in the Sicilian city of Messina on Saturday evening.

Three panels of the Polyptych of San Gregorio and a double-sided panel showing the Madonne and Child with a Franciscan monk on one side and Christ on the other, were taken from the Regional Interdisciplinary Museum of Messina during a religious celebration that saw around 100,000 people descend on the port city.

Italy’s culture minister, Alessandro Giuli, said he learned of the theft of the works with “bewilderment and regret”, describing the paintings as of “extraordinary value for our cultural heritage”.

The San Gregorio altarpiece was commissioned in the 15th century for Messina’s church of San Gregorio, which was destroyed in 1908, and originally included six panels, though only five remain today. It was the only Antonello painting never to have left his home city.

The double-sided panel was sold by Christie’s to the Sicilian Regional Government in 2003 for £251,650. Joanne Wright, an author who has written on Antonello, told the auction house at the time that the work was a “fascinating compendium” of the artist’s early influences.

According to the Italian news agency Ansa, the Madonna with Child was removed directly from inside a secure display case. The agency reports that thieves abandoned two of the Polyptych of San Gregorio’s five panels before making their escape.

“We are shocked by what happened. They were two of the most important and well-known works by Antonello da Messina,” the museum’s director, Marisa Mercurio, told Ansa. “[It is] a great loss for the museum, for the city, the community and the art world.”

Messina’s mayor, Federico Basile, told The New York Times that passers-by noticed “suspicious activity” at the museum and immediately alerted the police. He told the paper that he believes the incident was “certainly a planned theft”. 

Investigators are looking into the theft and, according to Ansa, are exploring the possibility that the paintings were stolen to order, for sale on the black market.  

This latest heist comes just days after Italian police recovered three paintings by Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse that were stolen from a private museum near the city of Parma earlier this year. `The works, valued at around $7m, $3.5m, and $23,000, were found during searches conducted by the Italian Carabinieri’s art recovery squad.

Giuli, who has consulted with the specialist cultural heritage unit regarding Saturday’s theft, described the recovery of the French masters’ works as “an operation of great importance” which “gives back to the community a heritage of extraordinary value”.