On the eve of Italy's most sacred summer holiday, four Renaissance panels by Antonello da Messina — works that have outlasted empires and centuries of upheaval — were carried out of a Sicilian museum by thieves who may have understood their monetary value without grasping their deeper predicament. The theft from Messina's MuMe museum during Ferragosto speaks to a recurring tension in the human relationship with beauty: that which is most irreplaceable is also most coveted, and yet its very fame becomes the thief's undoing. These paintings, too recognizable to sell and too significant to vanish