Antonello da Messina’s paintings stolen in Sicily

• Thieves stole four Renaissance period artworks by painter Antonello da Messina from a museum in his Sicilian hometown.

• The theft deprives Messina of parts of the only surviving work by the Renaissance painter to have remained in his native city, as well as a small painting the Sicilian region acquired two decades ago.

• The thieves entered the Museo Regionale di Messina on August 15, while the town was busy celebrating Assumption Day.

• The Ferragosto holiday, which marks the feast of the Assumption of Mary, marks the height of the Italian summer holiday season, and was being celebrated in Messina with a procession that culminated in prayers and a blessing in the main Piazza Duomo around the time of the heist.

• The thieves stole five wooden panels that made up an altarpiece measuring 170 cm by 203 cm, known as Polittico di San Gregorio, but abandoned two panels just outside the museum.

• Originally comprising six boards and destined for a local monastery that was destroyed by Messina’s 1908 earthquake, the altarpiece was the only work by the Sicilian painter never to have left his hometown.

Who was Antonello da Messina?

• Antonello da Messina was the main early Renaissance painter of southern Italy. 

• Born around 1430, Antonello trained in Naples where he studied the works of Flemish artists, whose influence is apparent in his works. 

• Antonello was chiefly famous for his portraits, but like his Netherlandish precursors, was equally gifted as a painter of religious subjects in small, cabinet pictures like ‘Saint Jerome in his Study’.

• He returned to Messina in 1457, where he worked until 1474.