A Baroque masterpiece by Italian painter Guercino was stolen from a church in Modena last week.
The 1639 large painting, “Madonna with the saints John the Evangelist and Gregory the Wonderworker”, was located inside the Church of San Vincenzo in the center of Modena when it was stolen along with its frame on Sunday night.
The parish priest, Father Gianni Gherardi, said the masterpiece was not insured because the church could not afford to insure every painting in its possession; nor was it protected by an alarm due to a lack of funds. He said there were no signs of forced entry, which suggests that the thieves hid inside the church until it closed.
Police suspect the theft was commissioned, possibly by an unscrupulous collector. The painting had been recently returned from an exhibition at the Venaria Palace near Turin. The head of the local cultural authority, Stefano Casciu, said the painting, which is considered among Guercino’s masterpieces, is too famous to be resold on the open market, posing the risk that the painting be cut up into pieces so they could be sold individually, unless there is a high-profile collector behind the theft.
The painting is estimated to be worth between 5 and 6 million euros.
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591 – 1666), best known as Guercino, was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from Cento, in the province of Ferrara, and active in Rome and Bologna.
