Stolen Masterpieces Worth $10 Million Discovered in a Cardboard Box, Months After Thieves Snuck Into a Museum and Whisked Them Away Into the Night

The artworks by Cézanne, Renoir and Matisse disappeared in a three-minute heist earlier this year. Now, police have arrested five suspects in connection with the burglary in northern Italy

Ellen Wexler | Writer and Special Projects Editor

August 18, 2026 11:24 a.m.

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Long after closing time, the thieves slipped into the dark museum through a window. Security footage shows them quietly removing three pieces from the wall. The artworks were worth more than $10 million, and they had vanished in less than three minutes.

Now, following a lengthy investigation, the missing artworks have been recovered, Italian officials announced on August 14. Police found them inside an empty television box at a home in Parma, Italy. Five suspects have been arrested in connection with the burglary.

“They were professionals,” an unnamed official tells the London Times’ Tom Kington. “But we were better.”

The artworks in question are Paul Cézanne’s Still Life With Cherries (worth around $7 million), Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Les Poissons ($3.5 million) and Henri Matisse’s Odalisque on the Terrace ($23,000). They had been on display at the Magnani-Rocca Foundation, a museum located about 12 miles from Parma.

In late March, the thieves approached the museum in the middle of the night and set their plan in motion. To avoid detection, they allegedly disabled the building’s alarm system and set off a fire extinguisher, hoping to distract security. By the time the police arrived, they had escaped the premises.

“The criminals, who must have scoped out the building in advance, will look to cash out as quickly as possible,” Christopher Marinello, the founder of Art Recovery International, told the Art Newspaper’s Gareth Harris in the days after the theft.

The incident occurred about five months after a shocking heist at the Louvre in Paris. Since then, aspiring art thieves have learned “that they can get into any museum if they cover their faces and move quickly enough,” Marinello said. “Museums need to start thinking about the possibility of the three-minute theft.” (One such heist took place this past weekend, when burglars stole four Renaissance paintings from a museum in Messina, in Italy’s Sicily region.)

The Louvre theft prompted calls for heightened security at museums throughout Europe. About a decade earlier, an audit had flagged a major security vulnerability: The password for the museum’s CCTV network was “Louvre,” in capital letters. Had the most-visited art museum in the world beefed up its systems since then?

Several suspects have been arrested in connection with the Louvre heist, but the jewels are nowhere to be found. In Italy, meanwhile, the Magnani-Rocca Foundation thieves may have had one vital weakness: Officials say they may be connected to 14 other thefts at homes and businesses in the area, but they had little experience with art heists.

“This was our advantage,” Giuseppe Marseglia, who supervised the investigation, tells the New York Times’ Elisabetta Povoledo. “They thought it would be easy.”

When art crimes make headlines, selling the stolen art can be difficult. In this case, the works were immediately added to databases identifying missing masterpieces. The thieves, perhaps unsure how to proceed, kept them in Parma.

That delay was critical to investigators, who started their search with the fire extinguisher and a tool that had been used to break the window. According to the Associated Press, this evidence led them to an apartment building—and a group of suspects from Moldova. After identifying 13 properties to search, authorities found the artworks.

Last week, the art-theft squad called in Stefano Roffi, scientific director of the Magnani-Rocca Foundation, to identify the recovered pieces. He tells ANSA that the theft had shocked the museum, but he was glad that the works were finally coming home.

“We have moved past the disbelief and bitterness we felt when we first heard the news of the theft,” says Simone Dall’Orto, the mayor of the village where the theft occurred, per France 24. “Today, those feelings have been replaced by immense joy and satisfaction.”

Ellen Wexler is a staff writer and special projects editor, digital, for Smithsonian magazine.