Church of San Vincenzo in Modena Theft
In the Church of San Vincenzo in Modena, Italy there is a masterpiece of a painting. Created between 1629-1630 by Italian artist Guercino, this is considered to be one of his best and most important works. So how did it disappear in 2014 with no signs of forced entry?
Guercino
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, more commonly known as Guercino, was born into a family of farmers in Cento, about halfway between Bologna and Ferrara. He got his nickname because he was cross eyed as a child and Guercino means squinter in Italian. In terms of his art career, he was mostly self-taught until he was 16 when he got an apprenticeship in the shop of Benedetto Gennari in Bologna. While there he started to be known for his skill and even caught the attention and praise of Ludovico Carracci, another prominent Italian painter at the time.
Guercino is known for his naturalistic style and striking lighting in his works, he said that he was influenced by Caravaggio. He is also known for how many works he was commissioned to paint for churches. This brings us to the piece in question today, Madonna and St. John the Evangelist with St. Gregory the Wonderworker. This piece was created between 1629-1630 and it is considered to be one of Guercino’s masterpieces. Measuring 3x2 meters it is massive and then adding the frame on top of that it’s even grander. Easy to see why people call it a masterpiece.
Let’s Get Into It
Late at night on August 10, 2014 Madonna and St. John the Evangelist with St. Gregory the Wonderworker was stolen from its home as the altarpiece of the Church of San Vincenzo in Modena, Italy. It is estimated to be worth as much as $8 million.
The painting wasn’t insured but you’ll be glad to know that the church had a security system! Unfortunately the security alarms weren’t functioning that night, or any other, because the church didn’t have the money to maintain them. So all the police had to go on was any physical evidence left at the scene. You guessed it, there really wasn’t any.
They did notice a few interesting things though. The first being the fact that there were no signs of forced entry to the church building. The church locked its doors after Sunday Mass so this suggests that the thief or thieves had stayed hidden out in the building after Mass ended and waited for the coast to be clear to take down the painting and make their escape. The second being that the thieves took the painting and the frame. Like I said before the two of those together is absolutely massive, so this points to more than one thief and also a big getaway vehicle like a truck or van. Some police officers thought that the thieves maybe were planning on cutting up the canvas and selling the pieces separately but the fact that they were so careful to take the entire thing in the frame would suggest otherwise, why go to the trouble if you’re just going to cut it up?
Predictably, the case went cold pretty fast. There were no leads and no one had any idea where the painting could be.
Until
Obviously the police were still on the lookout for the painting in the years that followed the theft, it was referred to as one of the most serious art thefts in Italy that decade. So they kept their ears to the ground.
Then, in 2017, a breakthrough. The Italian authorities got a call from Moroccan police saying that they had arrested some people (it’s not 100% clear how many) for trying to sell Madonna and St. John the Evangelist with St. Gregory the Wonderworker for 10 million dirham (around $1 million) in a suburb of Casablanca. The amazing thing is that police were able to recover the painting however extensive damage has been done to it, one of the men arrested said it had been stored in a rolled up carpet for years. An old canvas with old paint does not do well being rolled up. Extensive restoration will need to be done before the piece can be displayed again.
I haven’t been able to find a lot about the trials of the thieves or the restoration effort but the big question was where should this painting go for the foreseeable future, once it’s fit to be displayed. It’s said that the Church of San Vincenzo still lacks appropriate security measures so some people called for it to live, at least temporarily, in a nearby museum and that is in fact where it ended up and where it’s still on display now. The diocese is working on improving security measures across all their churches so hopefully Madonna and Saint John the Evangelist with St. Gregory the Wonderworker can go home soon.
Works Cited
“A Guercino Masterpiece: Stolen August 10, 2014”. Stolen Cavalier. 2014. https://stolencavalier.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/a-guercino-masterpiece-stolen-on-august-10-2014/
Sharpe, Emily. “Photos of Guercino Painting, Rolled up in a Rug by Thieves, Reveal Extent of Damage”. The Art Newspaper. 2017. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2017/03/22/photos-of-guercino-painting-rolled-up-like-a-rug-by-thieves-reveal-extent-of-damage