Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse works stolen in ‘three-minute’ Italian museum heist

Paintings by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse have been stolen from a private museum near the Italian city of Parma in the north of the country. According to a statement from the carabinieri (Italian police), four men entered the Magnani-Rocca Foundation, housed in a rural villa south of Parma, on 22 March to remove Les Poissons (1917) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Still Life with Cherries (around 1890) by Paul Cézanne and Odalisque on the Terrace (1922) by Henri Matisse.

According to the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, the hooded criminals entered by forcing open a door. According to a statement provided by the foundation to the newspaper, the thieves took less than three minutes to carry out the theft, partly because the alarm system was activated, forcing the gang to flee.

The lawyer Christopher Marinello, the founder of the company Art Recovery International, tells The Art Newspaper that “the criminals, who must have scoped out the building in advance, will look to cash out as quickly as possible. They’ve also learnt from the Louvre theft [last year] that they can get into any museum if they cover their faces and move quickly enough. Museums need to start thinking about the possibility of the three-minute theft.”

In a post on LinkedIn, the intellectual property lawyer Eloise Calder said: “As methods evolve and operations seem to become more targeted and sophisticated, the challenge is no longer just recovery but prevention. For now though, the immediate focus is on the safe and swift return of these stolen works, something the art world will be watching closely.”

The Magnani-Rocca Foundation is one of the most significant private art collections in Italy, housing works by artists such as Dürer, Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Goya. It was founded in 1977 by the collector Luigi Magnani and opened to the public in 1990. The foundation was contacted for comment.