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<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s most important works.<\/p>\n The fourth, smaller stolen work, which depicts Virgin and Child. Photograph: Museo Regionale Accascina Messina\/Reuters<\/p>\n \u201cIt is an extremely serious and significant loss,\u201d said Marisa Mercurio, the director of the museum. \u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 the Sicilian painter never to have left his home city.<\/p>\n A fourth work was taken from a secure display case: a small double-sided painting depicting the Virgin and Child with a Franciscan monk on one side and Christ on the other.<\/p>\n The painting had belonged to the Wilhelm Soldan collection and was sold by Christie\u2019s to the Sicilian regional government in 2003, the year it was attributed to Antonello.<\/p>\n The haul could have been even greater: six paintings were stolen in total, but, inexplicably, two of the panels were abandoned on a low wall outside the museum.<\/p>\n Born around \u200b1430, Antonello trained in Naples where he studied the works of Proven\u00e7al and Flemish artists, whose influence is apparent in his works.<\/p>\n \u201cAntonello was instrumental in bringing Flemish oil-painting techniques to Italy<\/a>, making possible a new softness, delicate glazing and subtle shading,\u201d said Valentina Certo, an art historian affiliated with the University of Messina and author of the illustrated children\u2019s book The Workshop of Antonello da Messina. \u201cEven on very small panels, he was capable of extraordinary precision and detail.\u201d<\/p>\n The grounds of the Regional Museum of Messina. Photograph: Danilo Arnone\/Reuters<\/p>\n \u201cThe overnight theft is a wound inflicted on the historical memory and cultural identity of the city of Messina,\u201d she added. \u201cThese were works that had survived the earthquake, destruction and five centuries of history. To see them taken from the public in this way makes the loss impossible to measure in purely economic terms.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter | Every day<\/p>\n Sign up to Headlines Europe<\/p>\n A digest of the morning’s main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n On 28 December 1908, the city of Messina was struck by what is still considered the deadliest natural catastrophe in modern European history: a 7.1-magnitude earthquake lasting 37 seconds that killed half its population and levelled much of the city.<\/p>\n Along with homes, churches and monuments, invaluable historical sources and documents were lost, including works by Antonello.<\/p>\n In February, the Italian government secured a rare Antonello masterpiece at auction in New York, spending $14.9m (\u00a311m) on his Ecce Homo<\/a>. The painting, sold at Sotheby\u2019s, is an intensely human portrait of the suffering Christ<\/a>, believed to have been completed in about 1460.<\/p>\n Prosecutors in Messina have opened an investigation into the theft. Police sources said the museum was fitted with several surveillance cameras and that the works were protected by a sophisticated alarm system. Investigators are examining several lines of inquiry, including whether the paintings were stolen for the illicit art market.<\/p>\n According to the state news agency Ansa, investigators are also considering the possibility that the theft was carried out on commission for an art dealer.<\/p>\n The theft took place after Italian police on Friday had recovered three paintings<\/a> by the French masters Paul C\u00e9zanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse that were stolen earlier this year<\/a> from a private museum near the northern city of Parma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four of the most important works of art by the 15th-century Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-739985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739985","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=739985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782599590_285_500.jpg\")
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