Picasso, Matisse Stolen in Mega Art Heist

May 20, 2010— -- In a daring overnight raid masterpiece paintings worth over $120 million, including a Matisse and a Picasso, were stolen from the Paris Museum of Modern Art.

"I am saddened and shocked by this theft, which is an intolerable attack on Paris' universal cultural heritage," Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe said in a statement today.

The five modern art masterpieces were discovered missing early this morning as the museum was preparing to open to the public. It is now closed and police have cordoned off the area opposite the Eiffel Tower while forensic teams scan it.

"It is essential to allow the police to find out how the security system has been outsmarted and how such valuable paintings could have been stolen," Christophe Girard, Paris City Hall deputy culture secretary, said.

Investigators are examining the museum's surveillance footage which reportedly shows a masked thief at work, removing the paintings from the museum.

The next step for the police will be "to locate the perpetrators and of course to retrieve those paintings whose value is important, a total of just under 100 million euros ($127 million)," Girard said, putting the value of the pictures at a much lower estimate than initially reported.

Earlier the Paris prosecutor's office had put the total worth of the paintings much higher at approximately $613 million.

The stolen works were "Le Pigeon aux Petits-Pois" (The Pigeon with the Peas) an ochre and brown cubist oil painting by Pablo Picasso; "La Pastorale" (Pastoral), an oil painting of nudes on hillside by Henri Matisse; "L'olivier pres de l'Estaque" (Olive Tree near Estaque) by Georges Braque; "La Femme a l'Eventail" (Woman with a Fan) by Amedeo Modigliani; and "Nature-Mort aux Chandeliers" (Still Life with Chandeliers) by Fernand Leger.

The intruder entered by cutting a padlock on a gate and breaking a museum window, the Paris prosecutor's office said.