Thieves stole four artworks from the Museo Regionale di Messina, Italy, late on Saturday, while the town was busy celebrating Assumption Day, Messina Mayor Federico Basile told Reuters.
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.
As part of Assumption Day the celebrations, the people of Messina escort a carriage with colourful statues of the Virgin, Jesus and angels throughout the city during an hourslong procession known as ‘la Vara’.
Enzo Caruso, a local councillor in charge of culture, told Reuters the city had been ‘truly stunned’ by the burglary.
Caruso said the purchase of a piece by the Italian state for $15 million earlier this year had likely put the Messina museum on the criminals’ radar.
The museum also houses works by baroque master Caravaggio.
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.
The thieves took a fourth artwork from a secure display case: a small two-sided painting depicting the Virgin with Child and a Franciscan monk on one side and Christ on the other.
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