From the Italian police’s crack art crimes team comes the news that 3 stolen paintings by famous French artists were recovered and returned to their owners.
The Carabinieri, or military police, report that the paintings had been stolen in a heist from the private museum of the Magnani Rocca Foundation on March 22nd.
They include Fish by Pierre August Renoir, Still Life with Cherries by Paul Cézanne, and Odalisque on the Terrace by Henri Matisse, which together are valued at over $10 million.
A statement from the authorities detail that 9 Moldovan nationals are currently in custody as suspects pending an investigation. It also detailed that a 4th painting, another Renoir called Paysage de Cagnes, was abandoned during the escape from the villa that houses the foundation’s museum.
The thieves escaped across the garden after triggering an alarm, and left behind according to the statement, a previously stolen tractor which they used to batter down the gate which led to the villa.
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“The National Secretary for the Military Police expresses its applause and profound gratitude to all its colleagues engaged in the brilliant recovery of the masterworks,” the translated statement read, without additional details about how the three-pronged recovery operation was conducted, or where, or with what leads.
Still Life with Cherries is by far the most valuable of the 3, having last moved at auction for $7 million. Painted by Paul Cézanne in the penultimate decade of the 19th century, spherical fruit had become commonplace in the author’s Post-Impressionist period, with apples, pears, and peaches routinely appearing in his still life works.
Only two other works that include cherries are known, and this one is the only one of the 3 that includes no other fruit.
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