Modern museums design security around deterrence, delay, and response, layered measures which include access control, alarms, CCTV, and rapid police coordination.  All of which are intended to shorten the time between intrusion and intervention.  These thieves seemed to know this and set to work quickly.

Once inside, they quickly climbed the villa's sumptuous staircase and made their way to the Sala Cézanne, which housed one oil and five watercolours, selecting one and removing it from its hook. 

Their second target was the Sala Impressionisti, which contains works by French masters who are quite rare in permanent Italian museum collections.  

There they selected two, also small, high-value works:

and Henri Matisse's Odalisque sur la terrasse 1922

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Les Poissons, 1917

Medium:  Oil on Canvas

40 x 51.5 cm

Worth an estimated at €9 million.

Some news report say that the thieves left behind a second painting by Renoir,  Paysage de Cagnes as the team made their getaway in a 3 minute dash.  Other document that it was left in place within arm’s reach of the stolen works, along with a canvas from the Pourville Cliffs series by Claude Monet and post-war works by Hans Hartung, Jean Fautrier, Wols and Nicolas de Staël.

Perhaps the other artworks were too big?  Too many, or time was running out. One thing is certain, the strike team walked through one gallery to get to the other, making their choice of artworks seem intentional, an operational calculus versus indiscriminate removal.  Pre-selected, portable, and high-value targets.  

One possible motive behind high-value art thefts is their utility within organised crime as instruments of negotiation rather than objects of aesthetic or commercial interest. Works of art can function as portable leverage, stolen not for their sale's value, they are too recognisable, but for strategic use in bargaining with judicial authorities. 

In this context, cultural property becomes a form of currency within the criminal justice system, where cooperation, restitution, or intelligence can be perceived as useful bartering tools in exchange for reduced sentences or more favourable detention conditions. The cases of Flor Bressers and Raffaele Imperiale illustrate how artworks may be retained for years before resurfacing as part of broader negotiations, underscoring their value beyond the million dollar pricetags.

In Imperiale’s case, the possession of two stolen paintings by Vincent van Gogh, taken from a museum in Amsterdam, became a bargaining asset during his cooperation with Italian authorities. Similarly, Bressers’ involvement in the concealment and movement of the high-profile Frans Hals painting illustrated how such objects can circulate within criminal networks before resurfacing in judicial contexts. 

These examples suggest that, for organised crime actors, the true value of stolen art may lie not in its liquidity, but in its capacity to be converted into legal advantage. In this sense, the theft of cultural property can serve a dual function: both as a criminal enterprise and as a long-term hedge when justices comes knocking.