Renoir, Cezanne, and Matisse works stolen from Italian museum

Thieves stole paintings by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse from a museum in Italy a week ago, police said Sunday.

Four masked men entered the villa of the Magnani Rocca Foundation, near Parma in northern Italy, and made off with the artworks overnight last Sunday into Monday, a police spokesman told AFP, confirming a report on the Rai television network.

They made off with "Fish" by Auguste Renoir, "Still Life with Cherries" by Paul Cezanne, and "Odalisque on the Terrace" by Henri Matisse worth several million euros, said Italian media reports.

The thieves forced the entrance door to get into a room on the first floor before escaping across the museum gardens.

The whole operation took less than three minutes and was structured and organised, the museum told broadcaster SkyTG24.

They had not been able to go any further thanks to the surveillance system and rapid intervention of police and security officers, the museum added.

Police are looking at the museum's video-surveillance footage and that of neighbouring businesses, said a police spokesman.

The Magnani Rocca Foundation 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Parma hosts the collection of art historian Luigi Magnani, which also includes works by Durer, Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya and Monet. Founded in 1977.

The theft is the latest in a series of robberies targeting major museums in Europe.

Last October, thieves broke into the world-famous Louvre museum in Paris in broad daylight, escaping in less than eight minutes with jewellery worth US$102 million.