Thieves broke into a regional museum in Messina, Sicily, on Saturday night and made off with four wooden panels by Renaissance master Antonello da Messina, including three pieces from an altarpiece that had never once left the artist's hometown in more than 550 years.

The theft happened at the Museo Interdisciplinare Regionale (MuMe) during Ferragosto, the mid-August Italian holiday when the city's attention was fixed on La Vara, a major religious street festival. Investigators say the thieves bypassed the museum's alarm system and broke open a security case to reach the works.

The Only Antonello That Never Left Home

Three of the stolen panels belong to the Polittico di San Gregorio, a 1473 altarpiece originally made up of six panels — one was destroyed in the catastrophic 1908 Messina earthquake. The fourth stolen piece is a small double-sided devotional painting depicting the Virgin and Child on one side and Christ on the other, which the Sicilian regional government purchased from Christie's in 2003. Unlike much of Antonello's surviving output, which has scattered to museums across Europe, the San Gregorio altarpiece was the one major work that stayed in Messina.

"MESSINA WITHOUT ANTONELLO IS DEPRIVED OF THE VERY ESSENCE OF THE GREATEST ARTIST OF THE EUROPEAN RENAISSANCE." — ENZO CARUSO, MESSINA CULTURE OFFICIAL

Messina's top culture official, Enzo Caruso, called the theft "more than a loss" and "a disaster." Antonello, born around 1430, is prized by historians for fusing Flemish oil-painting technique with the light and clarity of the Italian tradition, and his work carries serious market value: Italy's Culture Ministry paid $14.9 million for another Antonello painting, "Ecce Homo," at a Sotheby's sale in February.

That value may work against the thieves. One art-crime analyst noted the stolen panels are so instantly recognizable to specialists that selling them through any legitimate channel would be nearly impossible — "stealing an Antonello may be far easier than selling one." Investigators are treating the case as likely aimed at a private black-market buyer or ransom-style negotiation rather than resale.

The Messina theft lands squarely in the middle of a bruising week for Italian museum security. Just a day earlier, police had recovered three paintings stolen in March from the Magnani Rocca Foundation near Parma, together worth roughly $10 million. Italian cultural officials say they are stepping up coordination with international art-crime units, but for a country with thousands of lightly guarded heritage sites, Messina's loss is a reminder of how exposed even a Renaissance master's most local work can be.