While Italy rested in the stillness of its midsummer Ferragosto, thieves moved through the MuMe museum in Messina and removed four paintings by the Renaissance master Antonello da Messina — works that belong not merely to a collection, but to the long memory of a civilization. The heist, timed with unsettling precision to a national holiday, raises questions that extend beyond security protocols: about the strange economy of stolen beauty, and about what it means to take from a community something it cannot replace. Art-crime experts suggest the thieves may have seized what they cannot truly p