Two burglars broke into the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice , early Tuesday morning and stole four paintings before abandoning one as they fled. The estimated value of the stolen work is nine million euros.
The alarm sounded at 5:48 a.m. this Tuesday morning. Five minutes later, the Cagnes-sur-Mer municipal police were already on the scene. Too late to prevent the theft: two individuals had just left the Renoir Museum with four artworks under their arms. Spotted thanks to security cameras, they fled, abandoning one of the paintings in their haste.
The mayor of the city, Bryan Masson, a member of the National Rally party , confirmed the incident in a statement, estimating the damage at nine million euros. "Attacking the Renoir Museum is attacking a part of the history and heritage of Cagnes-sur-Mer. These acts are particularly serious," he declared.
Founded in 1960 in the last home of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), the museum preserves the original furniture, the artist's easel and wheelchair, as well as portraits, landscapes and nudes by his hand.
Museum thefts are on the rise in France. Less than a year earlier, the Louvre was the target of a spectacular heist during which the eight Crown Jewels of France disappeared from the Apollo Gallery and have not been recovered. At the end of July, a gold necklace from the Vix Treasure, a 2,500-year-old Celtic artifact, was stolen in broad daylight from the museum in Châtillon-sur-Seine, which had already been targeted by two previous attempts. At the beginning of July, jewelry estimated at over €4,5 million was stolen from the Lalique Museum in Wingen-sur-Moder, north of Strasbourg.
In response to this series of events, the Ministry of Culture presented a plan of 33 measures in July. One of these measures recommends temporarily removing the most vulnerable pieces from display cases, to "safeguard them in suitable locations that will be identified for each department, pending the securing of their display."
