If 2025 was the year of the museum robbery, perhaps 2026 will be the year of the recovery. On Friday, Italian police announced that they had recovered three artworks stolen in March from the Fondazione Magnani Rocca near Parma in Northern Italy, according to Reuters.
The recovered paintings are Paul Cezanne’s Still Life with Cherries (1890), Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s late-career Les Poissons (1917), and Henri Matisse’s Odalisque on the Terrace (1922).
Their collective value is said to be in excess of $10.4 million. A report by the BBC in March noted that Les Poissons, the sole oil on canvas, is worth the most, valued at around €6 million ($6.9 million). The Cézanne and Matisse are both works on paper.
The Cultural Heritage Protection Unit of the Carabinieri, the national gendarmerie of Italy, found the works in an apartment in Parma; nine Moldovan nationals have since been placed under investigation.
The painting were stolen on the night of March 22 into the morning of March 23. Police released a video of the robbery, which appeared to show a three-minute robbery in which two thieves entered through a window and grabbed the works off the wall.
Also known as the “Villa of Masterpieces,” the Fondazione Magnani Rocca houses the collection of Italian critic Luigi Magnani. Magnani established the foundation in 1977, before his death in 1984, and named it after his parents. His collection includes works by Titian, Dürer, Rubens, Goya, Canova, and de Chirico.
