Thieves have stolen four 15th-century works attributed to Renaissance master Antonello da Messina from the regional museum in his Sicilian hometown, taking three panels from one of his most important surviving altarpieces and a separate double-sided devotional painting in a major Italian art heist.

The burglary took place on the evening of Saturday, August 15, at the Museo Regionale di Messina, commonly known as MuMe, while much of the city was absorbed in celebrations for the Assumption of Mary and Ferragosto, one of Italy's biggest public holidays.

The thieves bypassed the museum's security systems and targeted works closely associated with one of Sicily's most important Renaissance painters.

Their principal target was the San Gregorio Polyptych, a monumental altarpiece dated 1473. Five surviving wooden panels were removed from their display, but the thieves abandoned two of them outside the museum while escaping.

Three panels remain missing.

The fourth stolen work is a small double-sided devotional panel.

One side depicts the Virgin and Child with a Franciscan friar, while the reverse shows Christ in Pietà.

The thieves removed it from a protected display case.

The Sicilian authorities acquired the painting in 2003 after it appeared on the international art market.

The financial value of the haul is difficult to establish because works of this historical importance rarely have a meaningful open-market price.

Art expert Alberto Fiz has estimated the stolen pieces at between €70 million and €80 million.

Their cultural value is harder to quantify: Antonello's surviving output is extremely limited, and the stolen works were the paintings by the artist that remained in Messina, the city where he was born and established much of his career.

Italy's Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli expressed dismay over the theft and described the works as being of extraordinary importance to Italy's cultural heritage.

Police and specialist art-crime investigators have opened an investigation, while the museum was closed as officers examined the scene and authorities reviewed how the thieves defeated its security arrangements.

Messina Mayor Federico Basile condemned the burglary as a serious attack on the city's heritage.

Its timing added to the anger.

The theft occurred while Messina was celebrating the Assumption with the traditional Vara procession, in which an enormous ceremonial structure carrying representations of the Virgin Mary, Christ and angels is pulled through the city's streets before large crowds.

Local culture councillor Enzo Caruso has suggested that the thieves may have been working for a specific buyer, describing the crime as almost certainly a commissioned theft.

That remains a theory rather than an established finding of the investigation.

The extraordinary fame of the works makes them exceptionally difficult to sell openly, and art-crime specialists note that stolen masterpieces can instead disappear into private collections or be used as collateral or bargaining assets within criminal networks.

The San Gregorio Polyptych has already survived extraordinary historical damage.

Antonello created it in 1473 for a religious complex in Messina.

The original work consisted of multiple panels and suffered heavily over the centuries, including damage associated with the catastrophic 1908 earthquake that devastated much of the city.

The five surviving sections became among the museum's most important possessions.

Antonello da Messina was born in Sicily around 1430 and trained in Naples, where he encountered artistic techniques associated with Flemish painting.

His work became celebrated for its handling of light, detail, portraiture and oil-based techniques, helping connect developments in northern European painting with the Italian Renaissance.

Only around 40 works attributed to him are believed to survive.

The rarity of his paintings has made them extraordinarily valuable.

Earlier in 2026, the Italian state acquired another Antonello work, a double-sided painting known as Ecce Homo, shortly before it was due to be auctioned.

The acquisition, valued at roughly $15 million, demonstrated the lengths authorities were prepared to go to keep a rare work by the artist in public ownership.

Caruso suggested that the publicity surrounding that purchase may have reinforced criminals' awareness of the enormous value attached to Antonello's surviving works.

The Messina burglary also came just after Italian police announced the recovery of three other important paintings stolen earlier in the year.

Works by Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse that had been taken from a museum near Parma in March were recovered by investigators shortly before the Sicilian theft.

The proximity of the two cases has renewed attention on Italy's long-running battle against art theft and trafficking.

The country possesses one of the world's largest concentrations of archaeological and artistic heritage and maintains a specialist Carabinieri unit dedicated to protecting cultural property and recovering stolen works.

For investigators in Messina, identifying the thieves is only part of the challenge.

The immediate priority is recovering the four missing works before they are damaged, concealed for years or moved through criminal networks.

The abandoned panels offer investigators physical evidence from the escape route, while the distinctive and internationally documented nature of the stolen paintings makes any legitimate resale virtually impossible.

The museum and the city are now waiting for the return of works that have survived more than five centuries of earthquakes, deterioration and historical upheaval.

Three surviving pieces of Antonello's San Gregorio Polyptych and the double-sided devotional panel remain missing as Italian authorities pursue the thieves and attempt to bring some of Messina's most important cultural treasures home.