The works, by Antonello da Messina, were taken as the Sicilian city of Messina held a religious celebration.
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 on maintaining order there, city officials said. “Coinciding with la Vara, it was certainly a planned theft,” Mayor Federico Basile said in a telephone interview.
Commissioned in the 15th century for the church of San Gregorio, which was destroyed during a devastating earthquake in 1908, the San Gregorio altarpiece originally consisted of six panels. Only five remain and were housed at Messina’s Accascina Regional Museum.
The thieves initially took all five remaining panels, but left two behind near a fence outside the museum, perhaps in their haste to escape, Mr. Basile said. The mayor said that passers-by noticed “suspicious activity” at the museum and immediately alerted the police.
Vincenzo Caruso, Messina’s chief cultural official, said that the thieves smashed a sealed case to get to the other work they stole, a small double-sided panel that depicts the Madonna and Child with a Franciscan friar on one side, and Christ on the other.
