Four works by the 15th-century painter Antonello da Messina were stolen from the Regional Museum of Messina during the evening of 15 August 2026, when the Sicilian port city was holding its La Vara religious festival and Italy was observing the Ferragosto holiday.
The thieves entered the museum, also known as MuMe, bypassed its alarm systems and broke into a protected display box. Police sources said the building had several surveillance cameras and a sophisticated alarm system. Prosecutors in Messina opened an investigation, with authorities examining multiple possibilities, including whether the works were intended for the illicit art market or taken on commission for a dealer. Those theories had not been established as fact.
Three of the stolen paintings were among the five surviving wood panels from the Polittico di San Gregorio, an altarpiece originally comprising six panels. It was created for the Monastero di San Gregorio, which was destroyed in the 1908 Messina earthquake. The altarpiece was the only Antonello work that had never left his home city, according to The Guardian.
A fourth stolen object was a small, double-sided painting. One face depicts the Virgin and Child with a Franciscan friar, while the other shows Christ. The work had belonged to the Wilhelm Soldan collection before Christie’s sold it to the Sicilian regional government in 2003, the same year it was attributed to Antonello.
Six paintings were initially removed, but two panels were subsequently found abandoned on a low wall outside the museum. No explanation for their abandonment was reported.
Museum director Marisa Mercurio characterized the theft as an exceptionally serious loss for Messina and Sicily because of the works’ cultural, artistic and symbolic significance. Art historian Valentina Certo, who is affiliated with the University of Messina, described their removal as an injury to the city’s historical memory and identity. She noted that the paintings had endured five centuries and the destruction associated with the earthquake.
Antonello, born around 1430, trained in Naples and studied Provençal and Flemish art. Certo said he helped introduce Flemish oil-painting methods into Italy, enabling delicate glazing, softer effects and subtle shading, while achieving notable precision on small panels.
The city’s connection to the surviving works is also shaped by the disaster of 28 December 1908. A magnitude-7.1 earthquake lasting 37 seconds levelled much of Messina, killed half its population and destroyed homes, churches, monuments, records and artworks, including works by Antonello.
The theft followed Italy’s acquisition in February of Antonello’s *Ecce Homo* at a New York auction for $14.9 million. It also occurred one day after Italian police recovered three works by Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse that had been stolen from a private museum near Parma.
