Thieves stole four works from the Renoir Museum on the French Riviera, with two still missing. The case has revived concerns over museum security after a series of high-value art thefts.

Thieves stole four works from the Renoir Museum on the French Riviera, though two of them were later found in the museum garden as the offenders fled, the mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer said on Tuesday. The two paintings still missing are “Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano” and “Young Woman at the Well”.

The museum has 12 Renoir works in total. As police search for those behind the theft, the case has drawn attention to a series of other major art heists in museums across Europe and the United States.

In March, thieves stole three paintings by French masters from the Magnani Rocca Foundation, a private museum near Parma in northern Italy. The works were “Fish” by Auguste Renoir, “Still Life with Cherries” by Paul Cezanne, and “Odalisque on the Terrace” by Henri Matisse. Though described as minor works, they were estimated to be worth millions of euros. The paintings were recovered in August by the Italian Carabinieri’s art recovery squad, and five people believed to be part of an organised crime group were detained.

In another major theft, nine pieces from the jewellery collection of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and his family were stolen from the Louvre in October during a daytime heist. The thieves used a basket lift to scale the facade shortly after the museum opened, smashed display cases within minutes and escaped with jewels valued at an estimated 88 million euros, including a sapphire diadem, a necklace and a single earring. The four-person group was later caught, but most of the jewels have not been recovered. Only the diamond and emerald-studded crown of Empress Eugenie was found, damaged outside the museum after it was apparently dropped. The theft led the Louvre to replace its director and tighten security and surveillance.

The Louvre has also seen one of the world’s most famous art thefts. In 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former worker who hid inside the museum and walked out with the painting under his coat. It was found two years later in Florence, in an episode that helped make Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait the world’s best-known artwork.

In the United States, the 1990 theft at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum remains unsolved 35 years later. In the early hours of March 18, two men dressed as Boston police officers entered the museum by saying they were responding to a call. They overpowered two security guards, tied them up with duct tape and spent 81 minutes taking 13 works, including paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet. Authorities have said the missing art may be worth as much as a half-billion dollars, while museum officials have said it is priceless because it cannot be replaced. Some works, including Rembrandt’s “Storm on the Sea of Galilee”, were cut from their frames, which still hang empty in the museum.

Germany has also seen high-profile museum thefts. In 2017, burglars stole a 100-kilogram solid gold Canadian coin known as the “Big Maple Leaf” from Berlin’s Bode Museum. Investigators said the offenders smashed a protective case and took the coin out through a museum window before escaping along a railway track with it in a wheelbarrow. Authorities believe the coin, valued at about 3.75 million euros, was later cut up and sold in pieces. Three men, including a museum security guard, were convicted.

Two years later, thieves broke into Dresden’s Green Vault, smashed vitrines and stole diamond-studded royal jewels worth hundreds of millions of euros. Officials said the thieves took three “priceless” sets of 18th-century jewellery that would have been impossible to sell openly. Part of the stolen haul was later recovered, and five men were convicted while a sixth was acquitted.

The theft at the Renoir Museum has added to a long list of major art crimes, ranging from the disappearance of the Mona Lisa to more recent robberies in Italy, France, the US and Germany, many involving works or valuables worth millions and, in some cases, never fully recovered.

With PTI Inputs