This is Why You Don’t Steal a Picasso

Paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Monet and others that were stolen from a museum last year may have been burned. Investigators are testing the ashes found in the stove of the mother of one of the Romanian suspects charged with stealing the paintings from Rotterdam’s Kunsthal gallery.

The image above depicts the empty wall space where one of the paintings used to be hung. 

While the paintings would fetch tens of millions of dollars if sold at auction, the possibility that they may have been burned testifies to Rule #1 in stolen art. Stealing the art is the easy part. Selling stolen art on the black market, not so easy. 

According to the Associated Press, it could take months for the results of the tests to be known. Read more here.