Paintings worth millions of pounds by the famous artists Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse were stolen from a museum in Italy last week in a daring three-minute heist.
Four masked thieves broke into the Magnani Rocca Foundation villa near Parma in northern Italy and swiped the artworks in the middle of the night on 22 March, a local police spokesperson said.
‘Les Poissons’ by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, ‘Still Life with Cherries’ by Paul Cézanne and ‘Odalisque on the Terrace’ by Henri Matisse, were stolen, according to Italian media reports.
The estimated total value of the stolen paintings amounts to €9m (£7.8m), the BBC reported, with ‘Les Poissons’ being worth €6m alone.
The burglars managed to crack open the entrance door and infiltrate a room on the first floor, the museum told the broadcaster SkyTG24.
The thieves were interrupted by the museum’s alarm system, which prompted police and security officers to intervene. However, they were able to make a quick getaway across the museum gardens by climbing over a fence, according to local broadcaster TGR, who first reported the robbery on Sunday.
Police are investigating the surveillance footage, and that of nearby businesses, a police spokesperson said. Italy’s Carabinieri and the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit of Bologna are also looking into the case.
The museum told Italian media outlets that the gang appeared “structured and organised”, and appeared to want to take more paintings.
The Magnani Rocca Foundation, founded in 1977, holds the collection of the art historian and composer Luigi Magnani. It includes the works of famous artists including Dürer, Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya and Monet.
Renoir was known as one of the pioneers of the Impressionist movement and completed ‘Les Poissons’ in around 1917.
‘Still Life with Cherries’ by Cézanne, finished in around 1890, is particularly rare because it makes use of watercolour, which the artist only pursued during the final years of his life, according to the foundation.
‘Odalisque on the Terrace’, painted by Matisse in 1922, portrays two figures – one reclining in the sun while another holds a violin.
The incident is the latest in a series of art thefts in Europe recently. In October last year, the Louvre in Paris was a victim of daylight robbery.
The criminals managed to steal €88m ($102m) worth of crown jewels in just under eight minutes.
Four suspects, three men and one woman, were charged for the Louvre jewellery heist in November and now remain behind bars according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.
