2 Renoir paintings stolen from a French museum have been found, 6 arrested

PARIS — Two Renoir paintings stolen from a museum in southern France last month have been found, and six people arrested, local authorities said Friday.

The mayor of the town housing the Renoir Museum, Bryan Masson, issued a statement praising investigators who tracked down the paintings and suspects. The statement did not elaborate on how they did so.

The regional prosecutor's office and police did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The mayor announced a news conference for later Friday.

The two missing paintings were "Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano" and "Young Woman at the Well."

The thieves sliced through a fence, climbed through a window and initally stole four valuable Renoir paintings in the heist last month, but abandoned two of the artworks as they fled, authorities said. Investigators launched a national search for the perpetrators.

The whole operation took less than three minutes and targeted the most valuable works in the Renoir Museum in the town of Cagnes-sur-Mer, the regional prosecutor's office said.

The theft conjured up painful memories of the spectacular heist of crown jewels at the Louvre Museum in Paris last year and revived calls for better security and better funding for the many cultural sites large and small that dot France's landscape.

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