In a heist that would make even the most seasoned art thief raise an eyebrow, four priceless works by 15th-century Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were swiped from a Sicilian museum during a national holiday. The thieves, who clearly have an eye for quality but a questionable sense of timing, struck the regional museum of Messina, or MuMe, on Saturday evening, possibly while everyone was distracted by La Vara, a massive religious festival held on 15 August, when Italy marks the ferragosto holiday.

Bypassing the alarm systems with the ease of a seasoned cat burglar, the gang broke into a security display box and made off with four wood panels painted by da Messina. Among the loot were three of the five surviving panels from the Polittico di San Gregorio, one of the painter's most significant altarpieces. Originally six panels created for the Monastero di San Gregorio, which was destroyed in the 1908 Messina earthquake, this altarpiece was the only work by da Messina never to have left his beloved hometown. Who says sentimentality doesn't pay? Well, for thieves, it apparently does.

But they weren't done. A fourth work, a small double-sided painting showing the Virgin and Child with a Franciscan monk on one side and Christ on the other, was also taken from its secure display case. This particular piece had a storied past: it belonged to the Wilhelm Soldan collection and was sold by Christie's to the Sicilian regional government in 2003, the very year it was attributed to da Messina. Clearly, the thieves are connoisseurs of both art and provenance.

Born around 1430, da Messina trained in Naples, where he absorbed the influences of Provençal and Flemish artists, which are evident in his work. In February, the Italian government shelled out $14.9m (£11m) at a Sotheby's auction in New York to secure another da Messina masterpiece, the Ecce Homo, an intensely human portrait of the suffering Christ believed to have been completed around 1460. So, there's a market for this guy's stuff, and some people are willing to go to great lengths - or great heights, if you're climbing through museum windows - to get it.

The theft comes just days after Italian police recovered three paintings by French masters Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri Matisse, which were stolen earlier this year from a private museum near Parma. It seems the art world is a revolving door of theft and recovery, and the only ones winning are the insurance companies and the headlines.