Paintings by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse stolen from Italian museum

Three paintings by French masters Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse, reportedly worth an estimated $10 million in total, have been stolen from a museum in northern Italy, police said on Monday.

The theft took place at the Fondazione Magnani Rocca, on the outskirts of the city of Parma, during the night of March 22-23, the Carabinieri police said in a statement.

Thieves broke into the building's main entrance and took Cezanne's "Tasse et Plat de Cerises" (Cup and plate of cherries), Renoir's "Les Poissons" (The fish) and Matisse's "Odalisque sur la Terrasse" (Odalisque on the terrace), the police added.

Italian public broadcaster Rai reported the stolen works were worth 9 million euros ($10.34 million), a figure that was not confirmed by the Carabinieri.

THEFT TOOK LESS THAN THREE MINUTES

The museum, home to a private collection compiled by the late music critic and musicologist Luigi Magnani, said separately that the theft took less than three minutes.

The Fondazione Magnani Rocca's collection also includes works by Titian, Francisco Goya, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Claude Monet, Peter Paul Rubens and Giorgio Morandi, according to its website.

($1 = 0.8701 euros)

-Reporting by Alvise Armellini, editing by Giulia Segreti and Barbara Lewis/Reuters