JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Among the stolen: La Pastorale by Henri Matisse

In the dead of Wednesday night, as the Eiffel Tower cast its golden beam from across the Seine, a man emerged from the shadows to break into the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Dressed in black and with a mask covering his face, he cut a padlock on the gate and smashed a window to get inside. Once there, he set to work.

By the time museum guards noticed something amiss, shortly before 7am, the lone thief was long gone – and with him a stunningly valuable haul of artworks worth hundreds of millions of euros.

Read The French job—Paris art theft carried out by lone robber, in the Guardian, then Jonathan Jones on what we have lost.