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Rio de Janeiro, Mar 3 (EFE).- Brazilian police analyzed Friday the burned remains of picture frames from the Picasso, Dali and Monet paintings stolen last week from a Rio de Janeiro museum, while Interpol investigated the Internet site where a Matisse that was part of the haul had been up for auction.
According to local media reports Friday, the remains of wood and gesso from the frames were found in the poor neighborhood of Morro de los Placeres, also in Rio de Janeiro, thanks to a tip from an anonymous caller.
The area where the evidence was found, known as a drug trafficking stronghold, was a kilometer (more than half a mile) from the historic Santa Teresa district where the Chacara do Ceu Museum was robbed in an movie-like operation. The thieves fled on foot, mixing in with a big Carnival parade at a time when nearby streets were filled by some 10,000 people enjoying the sights and sounds of the first day of the Rio carnival, police said.
"The Dance" by Pablo Picasso, "Two Balconies" by Salvador Dali, and "Marine" by Claude Monet, together with "Luxembourg Gardens" by Henri Matisse, were state property and were not insured, according to the authorities.
A collection of Picasso etchings entitled "Toros" (Bulls) was also taken.
Police and museum curators were at first afraid that the works had been burned when a piece of canvas was found among the ashes, but it turned out to be nothing more than a label bearing the inventory number of the Picasso.
But federal police still do not rule out the possibility that fire destroyed the paintings completely, while the head of the Environmental and Historical Heritage Delegation, Deuler Rocha, said that the Picasso might well have been burned.
In the reconstruction of the crime carried out Thursday, the police concluded that at least the painting by the Spanish master had been damaged during the robbery.
Meanwhile the director of the Culture Ministry's Museum Department, Jose do Nascimento, said that "Luxembourg Gardens" by Matisse had been up for auction on a Russian website Thursday afternoon and remained displayed there for four hours at a starting price of $13 million.
The domain name of the site, www.art.mastak.by, was reported to Interpol.
Brazilian police fear that the country has become a transit route for international art thieves, and proposed boosting security for other works that form part of Brazil's heritage.
The robbery appears to have been devised by an international mafia but executed by local thieves, the police said.
The four robbers even took personal objects from some 10 tourists who were in the museum, and struck a guard with a revolver while trying to remove the Picasso.
The assailants caught the museum's guards by surprise, disarmed them and forced them to shut down the building's security cameras. The gunmen also briefly took as hostages several tourists visiting the facility.
No one was injured in the robbery, which took place shortly before the Chacara do Ceu Museum was scheduled to close.
The museum's director, Vera Alencar, told reporters that no robberies had occurred at Chacara do Ceu since the 1980s.
Nascimento said the robbery was not caused by a lack of adequate security, adding that part of the close to 95 million reais ($44.4 million) earmarked in 2005 for the cultural sector was spent on bolstering security at museums. EFE
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