A multi-million-euro damage was caused by a break-in at the Museum of the historic Magnani-Villa near Parma. The world is three paintings poorer.
In just three minutes, four masked burglars stole paintings worth several million euros from the Fondazione Magnani-Rocca’s collection in the northern Italian region of Parma. Agency reports say the robbery had already taken place on the night of March 22–23, but was only made public now. In accordance with the urgent instructions of the investigators, the private museum has so far disclosed no further details of the crime. The collection goes back to the art critic and Beethoven researcher Luigi Magnani, who died in 1984.
Back in 1978 he had begun making the artworks accessible in his historic villa in the village of Mamiano. The collection is among the few in Italy that include important works of French Impressionism and classical Modernism: those are the works the thieves had aimed for. Stolen were an oil painting from 1917 depicting fish by Auguste Renoir, as well as two watercolors – a still life with cherries by Paul Cézanne from 1890 and “Odalisque on the Terrace,” painted by Henri Matisse in 1922.
The works cannot be ordinarily offered or bought on the open market. But that does not matter: according to the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), the trade in stolen art mainly serves to finance international terrorism. The financial volume of this black market is said to be as large as the drug and weapons trade.
The patrons behind the crime must be imagined as correspondingly powerful and dangerous. Where gangs and perpetrators, despite high levels of professionalism, can be caught, tried, and convicted, the fate of the loot remained unresolved.
Art Crime Is Booming
Thus, the man dubbed “Spider-Man” by the boulevard press, Vjeran Tomic, was in 2017 sentenced together with two accomplices to eight years in prison and to pay 104 million euros to the city of Paris. They would have matched the estimated value of the masterpieces they stole in 2010 from the Musée d’Art Moderne: works by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Amedeo Modigliani. Since 2022 Tomic has been released. He has not disclosed the names of the patrons behind the crime. The paintings are gone. And as for the money …
Interpol reports that art crime is booming. In this context, UNESCO’s autumn-launched virtual museum of stolen cultural property seems more like a feeble brainchild. Likely precisely because of the outstanding digital architecture by Diébédo Francis Kéré, the visit is at most enjoyable on a high-performance computer. And that the vast collection continues to grow and has now gained three more impressive acquisitions can only please cynics.
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