PARIS -- A broken alarm system made it as easy as 1-2-3: A masked intruder clipped a padlock, smashed a window and stole a Picasso, a Matisse and three other masterpieces from a Paris museum Thursday -- a $123 million haul that is one of the world's biggest art heists.
Offloading the artwork may prove tougher, however, with Interpol and collectors worldwide now on high alert.
In what seemed like an art thief's fantasy, the alarm system had been broken since March in parts of the Paris Museum of Modern Art, according to the city's mayor, Bertrand Delanoe.
The museum, in a tony neighborhood across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower, reopened in 2006 after spending $18 million and two years upgrading its security system. Spare parts had been ordered to fix the alarm but had not yet arrived, the mayor said in a statement.
So with no alarm to worry about, a lone masked intruder entered the museum about 3:50 a.m., said Christophe Girard, deputy culture secretary at Paris City Hall. The thief cut a padlock on a gate, then broke a side window and climbed inside -- his movements caught on one of the museum's functioning cameras, according to the Paris prosecutor's office.
The stolen works included Pablo Picasso's "Le pigeon aux petits-pois" (The Pigeon with the Peas), an ochre-toned Cubist oil painting worth an estimated $28 million, and "La Pastorale" (Pastoral), a pastel-hued oil painting of nudes on a hillside by Henri Matisse worth about $17.5 million, Girard said.
