Four paintings by the Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museum in Messina, Sicily, on Saturday, Italian officials said, according to The New York Times. The thieves took advantage of an annual religious celebration that draws tens of thousands into the city's streets, making off with three of the five surviving panels of the Polyptych of San Gregorio and a small double-sided devotional painting, the Times reported. The works were the only paintings by Antonello, as the artist is commonly known, that remained in the city of his birth.
The celebration, known as the Procession of the Vara, is held every 15 August and drew an estimated 100,000 people this year, with law enforcement focused on maintaining order at the event rather than at the museum, city officials told the Times. "Coinciding with la Vara, it was certainly a planned theft," Messina's mayor, Federico Basile, said. The San Gregorio altarpiece was originally commissioned in the 15th century for a church that was destroyed in an earthquake in 1908, and only five of its six original panels survive, all held at the Accascina Regional Museum, according to the Times.
The Times reported that the thieves initially removed all five remaining panels of the polyptych but left two behind near a fence outside the museum, apparently in haste. Passers-by noticed suspicious activity and alerted police, the mayor said. Messina's chief cultural official, Vincenzo Caruso, told the Times that the thieves smashed a sealed case to reach the second stolen work, a small double-sided panel depicting the Madonna and Child with a Franciscan friar on one side and Christ on the other. Police are reviewing security footage from inside and outside the museum, Caruso said, adding that witnesses may have photographed the theft as it happened.
Renewed interest, and a difficult market
Interest in Antonello has grown this year after the Italian government purchased one of his paintings for $15 million, Caruso told the Times. According to the newspaper, an official with Italy's art theft squad confirmed an investigation was underway but declined to give further details, and the theft comes days after Italy celebrated the recovery of artworks stolen earlier this year from a museum near Parma.
Antonello, born in Messina around 1430 and active there until his death in 1479, is regarded as one of the great artists of the Renaissance, known particularly for his portraiture. Only around 40 works are definitively attributed to him, the art historian Grazia Musolino told the Times, describing his role in bridging Flemish and Italian painting traditions of the period.
The theft is a blow to the city's cultural identity. Mayor Basile said Messina had spent recent years building a "Messina, City of Antonello" brand and was developing plans for a virtual museum at the artist's birthplace, the Times reported. Caruso called Antonello "the greatest ambassador of our city." Experts cited by the newspaper cautioned that stolen museum pieces are notoriously difficult to sell on the open market. The cultural heritage advocate Francesco Finocchiaro, of Archeoclub d'Italia in Sicily, said he feared "intermediaries and unscrupulous collectors could be behind the theft of works of this significance." The museum's director, Marisa Mercurio, declined an interview with the Times but told Sky News Italia that the museum's alarms and security systems had been functioning and guards were on duty, saying, "It's not true that there was no security."
Source: The New York Times
