Italian police recover Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse paintings stolen from museum

Months after thieves slipped into a museum villa in northern Italy and stole paintings by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse, police say the works have been recovered.

The three paintings — “Fish” by Auguste Renoir, “Still Life with Cherries” by Paul Cézanne and “Odalisque on the Terrace” by Henri Matisse — were taken from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation near Parma in March. Investigators put their combined value at more than $10.4 million: about $3.5 million for the Renoir, $6 million for the Cézanne, and roughly $20,000 for the Matisse.

Parma police chief Andrea Pagliaro told AFP the investigation centers on a group of nine Moldovan suspects, five of whom are accused of carrying out the theft. He said the paintings were found at the home of one of the suspects.

Police video shows two masked intruders with headlamps breaking through a window, moving directly to the room where the paintings hung, pulling them off the wall and passing them to an accomplice waiting outside. The entire theft took less than three minutes.

The speed and precision of the raid point to advance planning, and the recovery is a rare win in a field where stolen masterpieces can disappear for decades. Because the works are well known, they would be difficult to sell through legitimate channels, inevitably complicating any attempt to cash in on the theft.

The Magnani-Rocca Foundation, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Parma, houses the collection of art historian Luigi Magnani, which also includes works by Dürer, Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya and Monet.

The heist was the latest in a series of high-profile robberies at European museums. Last October, thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris in broad daylight and escaped in less than eight minutes with jewelry valued at $102 million.