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Italian authorities have recovered three paintings by French masters stolen from a private museum near Parma earlier this year. The recovered works are Paul Cézanne’s Still Life With Cherries, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Les Poissons, and Henri Matisse’s Odalisque Sur La Terrasse, all together worth approximately $10.5 million. The three paintings were found hidden inside an empty television box in the storage room of a home in Parma on Friday morning, and five people have since been detained in the case, according to the Carabinieri, Italy’s national police force.
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Les Poissons (c. 1917)
The theft took place on the night of March 22 at the Magnani Rocca Foundation, a private museum about 12 miles outside Parma. Security footage released by authorities revealed two masked intruders breaking through a glass door panel, moving quickly through the museum, and lifting all three works from adjacent walls before slipping out through the gardens. Similar to the brazen heist at the Louvre last October, the entire operation took less than a few minutes.
Per the Associated Press, investigators said they recovered a pickaxe and fire extinguisher at the scene, both with their serial numbers removed. Forensic officers were able to reconstruct the numbers, linking the items to an apartment building connected to one of the suspects. Wiretaps and follow-up surveillance helped track the group down.
“They thought it would be easy,” said Lt. Col. Giuseppe Marseglia, who oversaw the art-theft portion of the investigation, told The New York Times. “This was our advantage.” He explained that immediately after the theft, the three paintings were listed on international stolen-art databases, effectively making them unsaleable. Four of the five people detained participated in the theft itself; the artworks were found in the home of the fifth. All five are Moldovan nationals who had been living in the Parma area.
The Magnani Rocca Foundation was established in the 1970s by Italian intellectual and collector Luigi Magnani and houses works by Goya, Titian, Dürer, Van Dyck, and Giorgio Morandi, among others. The museum hasn’t announced when they’ll go back on display yet, but Stefano Roffi, scientific director of the Magnani Rocca Foundation, told Italian news agency ANSA that their return calls for “a fitting celebration.”
WikiArt
Henri Matisse’s Odalisque Sur La Terrasse (c. 1922)
“Beauty always wins,” the museum wrote on Instagram. “After nearly five months, the three works stolen from the Villa dei Capolavori have been recovered thanks to the efforts of the Parma Provincial Command of the Carabinieri, the Parma Operational Section of the Carabinieri, the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit, and the Parma Public Prosecutor’s Office. Soon, they will be returned to where Luigi Magnani wanted them: before everyone’s eyes.”
Rachel King (she/her) is a news writer at Town & Country. Before joining T&C, she spent nearly a decade as an editor at Fortune. Her work covering travel and lifestyle has appeared in Forbes, Observer, Robb Report, Cruise Critic, and Cool Hunting, among others. Originally from San Francisco, she lives in New York with her wife, their daughter, and a precocious labradoodle. Follow her on Instagram at @rk.passport.