It’s been 10 months since $100 million worth of French state jewels were stolen in broad daylight from the Louvre museum in Paris; tragically, none of the pieces have been recovered. Same goes for the $70,000 worth of restaurant chairs lifted from 18 establishments in Madrid, and for the 12 tons of KitKats that fell off a delivery truck somewhere in central Italy (monetary value: priceless). All still at large. Well, weep no more (or just weep less), because we finally got one back from the bad guys! Last March, three paintings were stolen from the Magnani Rocca Foundation, a private museum near Parma, Italy. The pieces included works by Cézanne, Renoir, and Matisse, and amounted to roughly $10 million collectively. (Faithful readers will of course remember our previous coverage, where I wrote the intro as a sonnet and revealed that I had posed for the Matisse.) I didn’t dare to hope it would happen, but all three paintings have been recovered by Italian police, che fantastico!
Italian police have recovered three paintings by the French masters Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse that were stolen earlier this year from a private museum near the northern city of Parma, authorities have said.
The raid took place overnight on 22-23 March at the Magnani Rocca Foundation, about 12 miles (19km) from Parma, after a series of high-profile thefts from other European museums.
Police released footage showing two masked burglars entering through a window, grabbing the three paintings from the wall and immediately leaving the building, in an operation that took less than three minutes.
The recovered works are Cézanne’s Still Life with Cherries, which authorities said was valued at about $7m (£5.2m), Renoir’s Fish, valued at $3.5m, and Matisse’s Odalisque on the Terrace, valued at $23,000.
A statement from the Italian Carabinieri’s art recovery squad said the paintings were found during searches ordered by prosecutors, but gave no further details. The investigation is continuing.
On Thursday, civil police in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, said they had recovered eight Matisse illustrations that were stolen from a library on 7 December last year.
The works, created for the limited-edition art book Jazz and with a combined estimated value of about $200,000, had been stolen by two thieves who, on the final day of an exhibition, overpowered a security guard and an elderly couple visiting the library before fleeing on foot.
Police said they believed the theft had been ordered by Laéssio Rodrigues de Oliveira, 53, regarded as one of Brazil’s most prominent art thieves, who has been in custody since April after being arrested in connection with another case.
Police found the works at a home in São Bernardo do Campo, on the outskirts of São Paulo, and said they were in good condition.
Not one, but two separate recoveries of stolen art?! I don’t know if I can handle this preponderance of good news!! If you find this unexpected upswing as jarring as I do, don’t worry: over the weekend, four works by Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museum in Sicily… in a city named Messina. The da Messinas were stolen da Messina! So no sooner did the Italian Carabinieri reclaim $10 million worth of art in Parma, than $81-92 million went right back out the museum door down south. But getting back to the happy news, allow me to use the linking thread (or pigment, in this case) of Matisse works involved in each recovery, to wax a little poetic about one of my favorite oil paintings ever: Luxe, Calme et Volupté. Art historians credit it with starting the Fauvinist movement, a branch off from Impressionism that prized big, bold colors. You had me at yellow! Because I’m a sucker for rich splashes of color and ridiculously meticulous tasks, I spent about a year in an art class recreating Luxe, Calme et Volupté — in watercolor. I’d be equal parts pissed and heartbroken if my knockoff went missing, so a big round of applause to all the people who keep our original treasures protected.
Photo note by Celebitchy: All of these photos of the artworks are in public domain except for the first photo below. That’s Kismet’s reproduction!
I love art and this post is right up my alley. I find it all so fascinating. Glad these works were recovered!
Side Eye, you should check out the book Priceless! It’s written by the former head of the art crimes division at the FBI. It’s a fantastic book and covers the Isabella Stewart Gardner heist among others!
Nice job Kismet!
Score one for the good guys. The kinds of people who pay for stolen art (and historic jewelry) they can never openly display, just to own and deny access to it over everyone else (including the public) are not good people. They’re exactly the usual suspects we condemn for myriad reasons all the time.