Four Renaissance paintings of 'extraordinary value' are stolen from museum in Sicily

Published: 20:16, 16 August 2026 | Updated: 20:19, 16 August 2026 Four 15th-century Renaissance paintings of 'extraordinary value' were stolen from a museum in Sicily yesterday.  The paintings by Antonello da Messina were taken under cover of a huge religious festival that sees 100,000 people flock to the city of Messina.  The thieves managed to bypass the alarm systems and break into a security display box to steal four wood panels painted by Antonello – widely credited with changing the course of Renaissance art.  Three panels of the Polyptych of San Gregorio and a double-sided panel of the Madonna with Child and Christ in Pietà were taken from the Regional Interdisciplinary Museum of Messina on Saturday night.  Investigators believe that the paintings may have been stolen to order by black market art thieves.  Marisa Mercurio, the director of the museum, said: 'It is an extremely serious and significant loss. 'They 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.'  The celebration, the Procession of the Vara, is a religious ritual that takes places every year in the city.   The San Gregorio Polyptych, painted in 1473, depicts the Virgin Mary holding an infant Jesus Christ, surrounded by St Gregory and St Benedict as well as several angels Antonello da Messina was a 15th-century painter born and raised on Sicily and is known as one of the early Renaissance period's master painters. The San Gregorio Polyptych, painted in 1473, depicts the Virgin Mary holding an infant Jesus Christ, surrounded by St Gregory and St Benedict as well as several angels. The altarpiece was the only work by the Sicilian painter never to have left his home city.   His double-sided painting depicting the Virgin Mary on one side and an adult Christ in death on the other was also stolen.  While six paintings were stolen in total, two of the panels were abandoned on a low wall outside the museum for an unknown reason.  Federico Basile, the mayor of Messina, said he was 'deeply outraged' by the 'heinous criminal act'.  'A heritage belonging to all the people of Messina has been violated,' he said. 'Messina will not let its history be stolen.'  The theft comes just days after Italian police recovered three artworks worth more than €9million (£7.7million) that were stolen from a museum near Parma.  His double-sided painting depicting the Virgin Mary on one side and an adult Christ in death on the other was also stolen 'Christ in Pieta', the reverse side of a double-sided devotional panel by 15th-century Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina Two thieves wearing balaclavas and head torches were caught on video breaking through a window to enter Magnani-Rocca Foundation. They stole three paintings – Fish by Auguste Renoir, Still Life with Cherries by Paul Cezanne, and Odalisque on the Terrace by Henri Matisse – from the walls before bringing them back to the window and passing them to an accomplice outside. Italian police said they had arrested five Moldovans and found the paintings in the storeroom of a house in Parma. They had been stashed in the cardboard packaging of a flat-screen television. In October last year, thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris, the most visited museum in the world, stealing more than £75million of jewellery in broad daylight.