artworks

As Messina celebrated the Sicilian holiday of Ferragosto, thieves struck the MuMe museum to steal the masterworks by Antonello da Messina.

Thieves have stolen four Renaissance masterworks by Antonello da Messina valued at up to 80 million euros ($93m) from the MuMe Regional Interdisciplinary Museum in the Sicilian city of Messina in Italy.

Cultural officials and Italian media reported the theft on Sunday, saying the heist occurred at about 9:50pm (19:50 GMT) the day before, during Sicily’s major Ferragosto holiday.

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Italian news outlet Il Giornale dell’Arte said that the perpetrators had exploited the citywide distraction of the traditional Vara procession, which drew police and large crowds to central Messina.

Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported that the thieves cut through metal perimeter fencing along Viale Annunziata to gain access to the grounds. They then forced open a side door to enter the gallery halls. Once inside, the group breached an armoured glass display case to extract a small, double-sided tempera panel dating back to 1465-1474.

The portable devotional piece features the Virgin and Child with a Franciscan Monk on its front and Christ in Pieta on its reverse. Originally part of the Wilhelm Soldan collection from 1930, it was acquired by the Sicilian region at a Christie’s auction in 2003 following its formal attribution to Antonello.

The perpetrators also dismantled all five remaining tempera-on-wood panels of the historic San Gregorio Polyptych. Commissioned in 1473 by Abbess Fabria Cirino for the monastery of Santa Maria, which was subsequently destroyed in Messina’s 1908 earthquake, the altarpiece stands as the only surviving masterpiece by Antonello that remained in his hometown. The thieves made off with three key sections of the piece.

Italian outlet Repubblica reported that the thieves abandoned the remaining two panels depicting Saint Benedict and Saint Gregory resting against a wall near the museum grounds.

‘A real movie-style heist like at the Louvre’

“We are devastated by what happened. They were two of Antonello da Messina’s most important and best-known works,” museum director Marisa Mercurio told Italian news agency ANSA.

Local Culture Councillor Enzo Caruso told outlet Il Tirreno: “Nobody in Messina could have imagined a real movie-style heist like at the Louvre.”

Caruso said that international interest in Antonello’s oeuvre had expanded after Italy’s Culture Ministry purchased his Ecce Homo painting for $14.9m earlier in the year.

Lynda Albertson, CEO of the ARCA art crimes research association, told La Repubblica that “stealing an Antonello may be far easier than selling one” given the high visibility and historic footprint of the stolen panels.

She explained that high-profile art of this kind rarely gets sold, often spending years traded within the criminal underworld as leverage for other illegal activities.

Born in Sicily around the year 1430, Antonello da Messina stands as one of the defining masters of the early Italian Renaissance. Because few of his works survive today, his surviving paintings are considered irreplaceable cultural treasures.

The theft follows a separate case days earlier in Parma, northern Italy, where police recovered three stolen works by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse valued at roughly $11.5m.

MILAN, Italy — Thieves stole four works attributed to Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina worth millions of euros from the regional museum in the city of Messina in Sicily while crowds gathered across town for the traditional Assumption holiday celebrations, cultural officials and Italian media said Sunday.

The thieves bypassed alarm and security systems on Saturday evening at the MuMe museum, making off with three of the five surviving panels of the San Gregorio Polyptych, dated to 1473, as well as the double-sided panel depicting the Virgin Mary and the dead Christ in Pietà, which was removed from an armored display case, the news agency LaPresse reported.

They removed all five panels of the San Gregorio Polyptych from their frame, but abandoned two behind a wall while fleeing.

Art expert Alberto Fiz estimated the value of the stolen works at $81 million to $92 million.

“We are devastated by what happened. They were two of Antonello da Messina’s most important and best-known works. It is a tremendous loss for the museum, the city, the community and the art world,” MuMe director Marisa Mercurio told the news agency ANSA.

Mercurio said that the theft occurred just before 10 p.m., and that the alarms were working and the guards were on site. She described the works as central to the region’s heritage.

“These are not merely works by Antonello da Messina,” she told Sky TG24. “They are works that hold considerable significance in terms of our identity, as well as, of course, their artistic and cultural value, because they are works by our very own Antonello da Messina.”

Messina’s top culture official, Enzo Caruso, called the theft “more than a loss” and “a disaster.”

“Messina without Antonello is deprived of the very essence of the greatest artist of the European Renaissance,” Caruso told Sky, calling for the swift recovery of the stolen works.

Caruso noted that international interest in the artist had intensified since Italy’s Culture Ministry acquired Antonello’s devotional painting “Ecce Homo” for $14.9 million through negotiations with Sotheby’s in New York this year.

Lynda Albertson, an art crime analyst, said the works are instantly recognizable, impeding any effort to sell them through reputable channels.

“Stealing an Antonello may be far easier than selling one. If these are ordinary thieves, they will soon discover that — to their cost,” Albertson, who is the chief executive of the ARCA art crimes research association, told the Italian daily La Repubblica. She said such famous artworks often pass from one criminal to another, serving as collateral for other illicit activity.

The museum was closed Sunday while investigators gathered evidence. Neither museum officials nor the Carabinieri national gendarmerie could immediately be reached for comment.

The Ferragosto holiday, which marks the feast of the Assumption of Mary, marks the height of the Italian summer holiday season, and was being celebrated in Messina with a procession that culminated in prayers and a blessing in the main Piazza Duomo around the time of the heist.

The theft comes just days after police in the northern Italian city of Parma announced that they had recovered three stolen artworks by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse worth about $11.5 million. Five people have been detained in the March 22-23 theft from the Magnani Rocca Foundation located in the Parma province.

Barry writes for the Associated Press.

“Le Luxe II” by Henri Matisse is on display at Museum of Modern Art on April 27, 2022, in New York City. Police in Brazil and Italy announced Friday they have recovered stolen Matisse artworks, as well as works by Paul Cezanne and Pierre-August Renoir. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 14 (UPI) — Long-sought artworks by Henri Mattise, Paul Cezanne and Pierre-August Renoir worth millions of dollars and stolen in two separate cases have been recovered in Italy and Brazil, police said.

In the Italian city of Parma, authorities announced Friday that searches authorized by the local prosecutor’s office had turned up the three paintings stolen in March.

These include Still Life with Cherries, a pencil-and-watercolor on white paper by the post-impressionist artist Paul Cezanne with an estimated value of $6.9 million, Les Poisson (The Fish), an oil-on-canvas by the impressionist artist Renoir valued at $3.5 million, and Odalisque on the Terrace, a color aquatint on paper by the modernist Matisse with worth an estimated $23,000.

No arrests were reported in connection with the recoveries but the investigations were ongoing, the Carabinieri of Parma province said.

The works were stolen on March 23 from the Fondazione Magnani Rocca museum in Traversetolo, Italy.

Meanwhile, police in Sao Paulo announced Friday that they recovered eight Matisse artworks taken from the Mário de Andrade Library in Sao Bernardo do Campo, which were stolen in December.

Authorities told reporters the engravings were found in a home in the city, where they were being kept by a 44-year-old suspect who was allegedly guarding the pieces for the perpetrator of the crime.

Five other artworks by Candido Portinari, stolen in the same robbery, have not been located and are now thought to have been sold, police said.

The stolen Matisse engravings were part of a joint exhibition with São Paulo Museum of Modern Art titled “From Book to Museum.”

The Autry’s current exhibition, “Life, Liberty, and Los Angeles” is an excellent show that takes a deep regional dive pegged to its 250th American anniversary programming. Of all the pieces, See Lee’s meticulously stitched “Hmong Story Cloth” (circa 1980) is a poignant chronicle of making the journey to an unknown future in the United States. Utilizing the traditional paj ntaub embroidery format, the textile documents Lee’s family fleeing war-torn Laos and resettling in Long Beach during the 1970s. The narrative unfolds in sequential sections depicting military violence at a chaotic crossing of the Mekong River; lower panels remember Thai refugee camps, a rescue airplane and a Greyhound bus. This visual testimony shares striking cross-currents with Latin American arpilleras and paños Chicanos, linking disparate diasporic traditions through the shared language of quietly political, deeply personal needlework — in this case, preserving a crucial chapter of Southeast Asian migration to Southern California.

🗓️ On view through Jan. 31, 2027

DECEASED Friends actor Matthew Perry has sold two original Banksy artworks for nearly £1million – including the iconic Girl with Balloon.

The star tragically died in October 2023 after accidentally drowning in a jacuzzi while high on ketamine, with 127 items from his estate having now been sold at auction.

A pair of iconic Banksy artworks, Girl with Balloon and Nola, that Perry owned have been sold for £975,000.

The Hollywood actor, best known for his role as Chandler Bing on the hit TV sitcom Friends, died at the age of 54.

His estate has since been put up for auction with the money going to the Matthew Perry Foundation which helps substance users to recover.

The Girl with Balloon 2005 includes two spray-painted stencils on separate canvases of a child reaching for a red heart-shaped balloon.

Following an intense bidding war, it sold for a massive £709,674.

After including the 25 per cent buyers premium, it sold for £887,093.

The other iconic artwork, Nola 2008, is a screen print in colours on wove paper of a young girl holding an umbrella while sheltering from the rain.

It was the first Banksy Perry ever bought, according to Heritage Auctions.

The monochrome picture fetched £70,967.

Including the 25 per cent buyers premium, it sold for £88,709.

Both artworks have Banksy’s signature on them.

Other items sold at the auction included signed Friends episode scripts, TV guide displays, and a custom Chandler bobble head.

It also sold Batman memorabilia like a custom ping pong table and The Dark Knight Rises watch.

Perry’s cause of death was determined to be the acute effects of ketamine with drowning as a contributing factor. 

A year after the celeb’s tragic passing, the street dealer who supplied the ketamine, Erik Fleming, was jailed for two years.

Perry’s assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, was also jailed for more than three years after injecting the actor with the drug.

Both pleaded guilty to the charges during their court appearances.