Thieves have stolen paintings by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse from an Italian museum in a slick operation that lasted less than three minutes, officials have said.
The four masked men entered the museum of the Magnani Rocca Foundation, located in the countryside about 20km (12 miles) from the northern Italian city of Parma, through a back gate on the night of 22 March, a police spokesperson said on Sunday night.
They forced open an entrance door with a crowbar before fleeing with Fish by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Odalisque on the Terrace by Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne’s Still Life With Cherries, the spokesperson added, confirming a report on the Rai television network. Together, the paintings are estimated to be worth €9m (£7.8m).
The gang managed to get away along a dimly lit street about one minute before the police arrived. But experts described the paintings as “too hot to handle”, warning that thieves would have a challenge trying to sell them and might seek a reward instead.
“These works were not stolen for some private underwater collection – the thieves want to monetise them,” said Christopher Marinello, a lawyer and the chief executive of Art Recovery International.
The criminals would have probably moved the works out of Italy as quickly as possible, perhaps to eastern Europe in an effort to find an intermediary, Marinello added.
“But the more the press covers the story, the harder it’s going to be for them to sell the works because any idiot can do a Google search and find stories about the theft. These are just too hot to handle. The thieves think they’re going to find a buyer that isn’t going to ask any questions,” he said.
Instead, the gang might be able to profit from its heist if the museum offers a reward for information that leads to the recovery of the works, which originate from the private collection of the art historian Luigi Magnani, who died in 1984.
“Let’s say the pieces are insured for €9m, the museum could offer the public half a million to come forward with information,” said Marinello. “The thieves might then call and pretend they know someone who knows where the paintings are. The police instruct the museum to get in contact with them if it has any contact from anyone, and they take the next step, which can sometimes lead to a sting operation.”
The foundation said the thieves might have succeeded in stealing more masterpieces if it hadn’t been for the surveillance system and the “swift intervention” of police.
“They did fantastic to get to this museum in four minutes,” said Marinello. “This is not in Parma proper, this is in the countryside. So four minutes is not a bad response time, but not enough.”
The theft is the latest in a series of robberies targeting major museums in Europe.
In October last year, thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris in broad daylight, escaping in less than eight minutes with jewellery worth $102m (£77m).
“We’re in the smash and grab period, where criminals are taking sledgehammers and forcing their way through doors,” said Marinello. “You can break into anything in three minutes with a ski mask because the CCTV is going to capture what? Nothing.”
The Magnani Rocca Foundation, which was founded in 1977, also includes works by Dürer, Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya and Monet.
