Italian authorities announced on Friday that three valuable paintings by renowned French artists Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, which were stolen from a museum near Parma in March, have been successfully recovered. The Carabinieri officers from Italy’s cultural heritage protection unit discovered the artworks in an apartment in Parma and have initiated an investigation involving nine Moldovan nationals in connection with the theft.
The theft occurred at the Fondazione Magnani Rocca museum in Mamiano di Traversetolo, close to Parma, during the night of March 22-23. The estimated value of the stolen paintings, including Cezanne’s “Tasse et Plat de Cerises,” Renoir’s “Les Poissons,” and Matisse’s “Odalisque sur la Terrasse,” exceeded €9 million ($14.4 million. Surveillance footage released by the police showed two masked burglars breaking into the museum through a window, swiftly taking the three paintings, and making a quick exit, all within a span of less than three minutes.
The Fondazione Magnani Rocca is a repository of a private collection curated by the late music critic Luigi Magnani, featuring masterpieces by artists such as Titian, Francisco Goya, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Claude Monet, Peter Paul Rubens, and Giorgio Morandi.