Four Renaissance paintings of “extraordinary value” have been stolen from a museum in Sicily, Italy’s culture minister has said.<\/p>\n
Alessandro Giuli confirmed that three panels of the Polyptych of San Gregorio and a double-sided panel of the Madonna with Child and Christ in Piet\u00e0, all attributed to Antonello da Messina, were taken Regional Interdisciplinary Museum of Messina on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Police are now probing how the thieves were able to enter the museum without triggering its alarms and who may have been responsible.<\/p>\n
The incident is the latest in a string of museum heists across Europe that have led to a growing number of priceless works disappearing from public view.<\/p>\n
Investigators are working on the initial suspicion that the paintings were stolen to order by black market art thieves, according to Italian news agency Ansa.<\/p>\n
It reported that the Madonna and Christ in Piet\u00e0 was removed directly from inside a secure display case, while all the paintings taken were on wooden panels, preventing them from easily being rolled up.<\/p>\n
The museum’s director Marisa Mercurio said the theft was thought to have occurred around 21:50 local time (19:50 GMT) on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“We are shocked by what happened,” she told Ansa, describing it as “a great loss for the museum, for the city, the community and the art world”.<\/p>\n
Antonello da Messina was a 15th Century painter born and raised on Sicily, who would go on to become one of the early Renaissance period’s master painters.<\/p>\n
His San Gregorio Polyptych, painted in 1473, depicts the Virgin Mary holding an infant Jesus Christ, flanked by St Gregory and St Benedict as well as several angels.<\/p>\n
The artwork, of which five panels survive, was commissioned for the monastery of Santa Maria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four Renaissance paintings of “extraordinary value” have been stolen from a museum in Sicily, Italy’s culture minister has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-739957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}