Just days after the recovery of three important artworks in Italy, a new museum theft has struck Sicily during Italy's Ferragosto holiday. 

According to the Museo Regionale Maria Accascina (MuMe) in Messina, unknown individuals entered the building during the evening of Saturday, 15 August 2026, overcoming the alarm and object-protection systems before removing three of the five surviving panels of Antonello da Messina’s Polittico di San Gregorio, 

commissioned in 1473 for the monastery of San Gregorio, together with a separate double-sided devotional panel that had been kept in a secured display case.

da Messina's Polyptych consists of five panels arranged in two tiers: the lower tier features the Madonna of the Rosary flanked by Saint Gregory the Great and Saint Benedict. The upper tier depicts the Annunciatory Angel and the Virgin, while the central panel, possibly of Christ, was believed to have occupied the centre of the upper register, but disappeared centuries ago.

Police and forensic specialists began examining the scene of the crime immediately following the discovery of the theft.  The institution remained closed to the public on Sunday while investigators worked to reconstruct how the burglars gained access to the building, how long they remained inside, and how they succeeded in removing the paintings.  At the time of this writing, authorities have not disclosed the precise point of entry, the number of individuals involved, or what their initial investigation has determined. 

The timing is difficult to ignore. The theft occurred on 15 August, known in Italy as the Feast of the Assumption, when much of Messina was focused on the city’s famous Vara procession, one of its most important annual religious and civic celebrations.  Whether the offenders deliberately selected a night when public attention and local resources were concentrated elsewhere in the city remains to be established, but it is a question investigators will almost certainly consider as they reconstruct the planning behind the burglary.

The choice of a major public celebration as cover for a museum theft has a notable precedent in South America. On 24 February 2006, during Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival, four armed men entered the Museu da Chácara do Céu tole works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, and Salvador Dalí. 

The most significant loss in this holiday theft is the partial dismantling of Antonello’s 1473 Polittico di San Gregorio, one of the defining works in the museum’s collection.  The altarpiece was commissioned by Fabria Cirino, abbess of the monastery of Santa Maria extra moenia, known as San Gregorio, in Messina. bWhat remained of the altarpiece had already endured a long history of fragmentation, damage, and conservation before three of its component panel were stolen this weekend.

That history includes the catastrophic 1908 Messina earthquake, which destroyed much of the city and devastated the former monastery of San Gregorio.  The surviving panels of this altarpiece were among the many works exposed to the consequences of that disaster and subsequently underwent repeated conservation treatment.  Their survival in Messina is therefore significant not simply because of Antonello’s importance to Renaissance painting, but because they form part of a cultural patrimony that has already survived extraordinary physical loss.

The fourth work taken is far smaller and, for a thief, considerably easier to move. It is a double-sided devotional panel measuring approximately 15 by 11 centimetres.  This long-debated work, featuring an "Ecce Homo" and a "Madonna and Child with a Franciscan in adoration," was only attributed to Antonello da Messina in 2003, the year in which the Sicilian Region decided to purchase it at auction at Christie's in London and donated it to the Messina museum.  Previously, it had been exhibited in Taormina during the G7 summit.

The small panel has its own complicated history. It was largely unknown to scholarship until it surfaced on the art market at the beginning of this century. Photographs were shown in 2002 to the American art historian Everett Fahy, who attributed the work to Antonello da Messina.  Other specialists later examined it, although aspects of the attribution, including whether both sides were painted by Antonello himself, generated considerable scholarly debate.

Its removal may prove particularly useful to investigators because the panel was housed inside a protected display case. Entering a museum is one stage of a burglary. Successfully removing an object from an additional layer of protection once inside is another. How that case was opened or defeated, and whether the offenders arrived equipped specifically to do so, may help determine how much preparation preceded the theft.

The cultural significance of what has been taken extends well beyond the monetary value that may eventually be assigned to the paintings. Antonello was born in Messina, and surviving works by this artist are rare.  His paintings occupy an important position in the development of Italian Renaissance art, combining an Italian sense of monumentality and space with the precision, luminosity, and oil technique associated with northern European painting.

For Messina, however, Antonello has an additional importance. Much of the historic city and an enormous part of its artistic heritage were destroyed in the earthquake of 28 December 1908. The Museo Regionale developed in large part as a repository for paintings, sculpture, and architectural material recovered from ruined churches, monasteries, and civic buildings and its collections consequently preserve fragments of a city whose physical appearance and cultural landscape were radically altered by this catastrophe.

The institution has, unfortunately, experienced serious losses before. In the early 1950s, art historian Federico Zeri, then a young inspector of the Superintendency of Lazio, together with Ferdinando Bologna and Raffaello Causa (of the Campania section), noticed that a panel displayed as part of a sixteenth-century Flemish triptych appeared to be a modern substitute.  The observation helped expose a much larger pattern of missing works. Subsequent investigations concluded that two hundred and sixty works of art had been stolen over the space of ten years, in some instances with originals apparently replaced by copies.  Only 50 were recovered, while others remained missing.

The circumstances of those historical losses are very different from the forced intrusion reported this weekend, but they underscore a problem familiar to anyone working in cultural property crime: once an artwork disappears successfully into illicit circulation, recovery can become progressively more difficult with each passing year.

The thieves responsible for the present theft now face a different problem. A panel by Antonello da Messina is not an anonymous or easily assimilated commodity.  The Polittico di San Gregorio has been extensively photographed, published, and is  immediately recognisable.  Its surviving components belong to a documented public collection and form part of a famous ensemble. They cannot simply be offered to a reputable auction house or art dealer without attracting unwanted attention.

The small double-sided panel presents much the same difficulty. Its Christie’s history, published photographs, distinctive imagery on both sides, and later acquisition by the Sicilian authorities make it equally identifiable.  That does not, however, mean the objects cannot circulate criminally. 

Famous stolen artworks may be transferred between offenders for a fraction of their legitimate market value, concealed for lengthy periods, used as collateral in other criminal dealings, or retained by thieves who discover that stealing a well-known painting is considerably easier than finding someone prepared to buy it.  

For now, it is also far too early to assume that these works were stolen for a particular collector or as the result of a specific commission.  Much will depend upon what investigators learn from the movements of the offenders once inside the museum and immediately before and after the theft.  

If surveillance footage shows that they entered and went directly to the Antonello works, that may suggest prior knowledge and deliberate selection. If they moved through the galleries considering multiple objects before settling on what they took, a different picture may emerge.

Alarm records, CCTV, tools left behind, traces recovered from the display areas, telephone data, vehicle movements, and the precise method used to access the building will all form part of the reconstruction analysis to be carried out by the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage.  The coincidence with the Vara celebrations may also prove important if investigators establish that the offenders had studied local routines and deliberately selected Ferragosto as an opportunity.

For now, what is certain is that a surviving masterpiece which had already endured centuries of dispersal, earthquake, deterioration, and restoration has once again been physically fragmented.

The Polittico di San Gregorio had already lost one of its original panels long ago.
On the night of 15 August 2026, thieves took three more.  For Messina, a city whose cultural history has already been marked by exceptional loss, their recovery matters far beyond the walls of the museum.