Three paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse, with an estimated combined value of €9 million, were stolen near Parma on 22 March in a raid that lasted approximately 3 minutes.
Four masked men forced their way through the main entrance of the Villa dei Capolavori, a private collection set in the Parma countryside, and went straight to the French Room on the first floor. They left with Renoir’s Les Poissons, Cézanne’s Still Life with Cherries, and Matisse’s Odalisque on the Terrace before escaping by climbing over a fence. The museum’s alarm system activated during the raid, which the foundation believes prevented the gang from taking more.
Cezanne Still Life with Cherries, made around 1890
Les Poissons alone is estimated at €6 million, making it one of the most significant art thefts in Italy in recent years. The foundation described the group as appearing “structured and organised,” suggesting the operation had been planned.
Les Poissons, an oil on canvas by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, created in 1917
The three works are of considerable art historical weight. Renoir completed the oil on canvas Les Poissons around 1917, late in his career, a period that had placed him at the forefront of French Impressionism. The Cézanne dates to around 1890 and is an unusual example within his series of cherry-based still lifes, painted in watercolour, a medium he only turned to seriously in the final years of his life. The Matisse, from 1922, depicts two figures on a terrace: one reclining in sunlight, the other holding a violin.
The Magnani Rocca Foundation holds one of Italy’s most significant private collections of old master and modern art, assembled over a lifetime by the art collector and critic Luigi Magnani. He founded the institution in 1978 in honour of his parents, Giuseppe Magnani and Eugenia Rocca, with a remit covering art, music and literary activity. The collection was opened to the public in 1983, a year before Magnani’s death, and is housed in the Villa Magnani in Mamiano, a district of Traversetolo in the Province of Parma.
Odalisque on the Terrace Henri Matisse Date: 1922
The range of the collection is considerable. Old master holdings include works by Gentile da Fabriano, Vittore Carpaccio, Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck, Albrecht Dürer, Francisco Goya and Filippo Lippi, alongside Domenico Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo Costa, Lippo di Dalmasio and Martin Schongauer. Antonio Canova and Lorenzo Bartolini represent sculpture.
The modern collection is equally strong, with 50 works by Giorgio Morandi among its most important holdings. Further works by Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Giorgio de Chirico, Filippo de Pisis, Gino Severini, Alberto Burri, Johann Heinrich Füssli, and Nicolas de Staël round out a collection that moves fluidly between the Italian tradition and the wider European modern canon.
The foundation is now at the centre of an active criminal investigation following the theft of works by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse on 22 March, the latest in a series of brazen raids on European cultural institutions that have put the security of privately held collections firmly back in the spotlight.
Italy’s Carabinieri is investigating the theft alongside Bologna’s Cultural Heritage Protection Unit. News of the raid was not made public until several days after it took place.