Stolen 34 years ago, Antonello Gagini’s columns return to Pietraperzia church for sale online
They were about to be sold online through a Catania auction house, but now they will be returned to the church from which they were stolen. Four precious marble columns by the master Antonello Gagini will be returned to the community. The District Prosecutor’s Office of Catania, after investigations carried out by the Carabinieri, has ordered the return of the valuable Caryatids stolen thirty-four years ago from the Mother Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Pietraperzia.
They were recovered by the military of the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit of Syracuse and by the Carabinieri company of Piazza Armerina, during monitoring activities of items sold on e-commerce platforms. Investigations revealed the exact match between the columns for sale and the photos inserted, at the time of the theft, in the “Database of unlawfully stolen cultural assets”.
Officials from the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage of Catania subsequently carried out further checks that confirmed: those precious items for sale at auction were indeed those stolen from the church in the province of Enna in 1990. The columns depict the four cardinal virtues (Charity, Science, Medicine, and Justice) and are part of the support of the funerary monument of Laura Barresi. The columns will be delivered on April 19, at 4:30 pm, when the commander of the Carabinieri unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Palermo will formally proceed with the return to the parish priest of the Mother Church of Santa Maria Maggiore of Pietraperzia.
Rubate 34 anni fa e in vendita su internet: tornano nella chiesa di Pietraperzia le colonne di Antonello Gagini
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