Art thieves in Italy have made off with an estimated £7.8 million worth of art, stealing paintings by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse.
The theft occurred on the 22 March – though details only came to light at the weekend – when four masked men entered the Magnani Rocca Foundation villa in the countryside surrounding Parma.
Tripping the alarm in the French Impressionism gallery, they nonetheless made off with Les Poissons, a 1917 paintings of fish by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Still Life with Cherries, a rare 1890 watercolour by Paul Cézanne and Odalisque on the Terrace by Henri Matisse, a Fauvist scene of two women, one dozing, one topless with a violin.
The thieves were out of the private institution, the former home of composer and art collector Luigi Magnani, in three minutes.
