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Another European museum has been struck in a brazen art heist. Thieves stole three paintings by French masters Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, and Henri Matisse from the Magnani Rocca Foundation, a private museum near Parma in northern Italy. The stolen works are Les Poissons (1917) by Renoir, Still Life With Cherries by Cézanne, and Odalisque on the Terrace by Matisse. An exact value hasn’t been announced, but the paintings are said to be collectively valued at millions of dollars.
Wikimedia Commons
Pierre-Auguste Renoir made several paintings with the name “Les Poissons” (Fish). This was the 1917 version.
According to the Foundation, per the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, the theft occurred overnight between Sunday, March 22 and Monday, March 23, and the entire job only lasted three minutes. The thieves allegedly forced open an entrance door, triggering the alarm and prompting the group to flee across the museum gardens. The museum told the newspaper that it believes a structured, organized gang was likely responsible based on internal video surveillance footage. The hooded thieves, caught on camera, were able to remove the paintings and escape before authorities arrived. The local police are investigating as well as the Carabinieri of the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit, Italy’s special task force for combating crimes related to priceless art and antiquities.
Wikimedia Commons
Tasse et plat de cerises (c. 1890) by Paul Cézanne.
Founded in 1977 by art historian and collector Luigi Magnani and opened to the public in 1990, the Magnani Rocca Foundation houses one of Italy’s most significant private art collections, with works by Dürer, Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya, and Monet, among others. The museum has not posted anything about the incident on its website as of Monday.
WikiArt
Odalisque sur la Terrasse (c. 1922) by Henri Matisse.
The Parma theft follows a string of high-profile museum heists across Europe, including an October incident in which thieves stole a selection of the French Crown Jewels valued at approximately $101 million, from the Louvre in Paris. A Pablo Picasso painting worth more than $650,000 vanished while being transported to an exhibition in southern Spain that same month.
Christopher Marinello, founder of Art Recovery International and an expert in looted art, told The Art Newspaper that the criminals almost certainly surveilled the Magnani Rocca Foundation’s building in advance. “They’ve also learnt from the Louvre theft that they can get into any museum if they cover their faces and move quickly enough,” Marinello said. “Museums need to start thinking about the possibility of the three-minute theft.”
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.