3 minutes, 3 masterpieces missing, surprising theft of paintings.

MILAN: Valuable works of art by three world-renowned artists have been stolen from the Magnani Rocca Foundation museum near the northern Italian city of Parma. According to police, the theft was completed in just three minutes. The stolen works include Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s 1917 oil painting Le Poisson, Paul Cézanne’s 1890 watercolor painting Tassle et Plas de Serres, and Henri Matisse’s 1922 work Odalisque sur la Terrasse. Surprisingly, the museum administration and police initially kept the incident a secret so that the suspects could be caught if they returned. The museum’s lawyer says it was a highly organized robbery, probably inspired by the recent theft at the Louvre Museum in Paris, but no arrests have been made so far.