Two paintings taken from MASP in Sao Paulo

In the early hours of 20 December 2007, three men forced the entrance of the Sao Paulo Museum of Art, known as MASP, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Folha de S.Paulo and the Associated Press report that they used a hydraulic jack and a crowbar. O Globo puts the time at about five in the morning. The whole job took about three minutes.

They took two oil paintings from the second floor. One was Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of Suzanne Bloch, painted in 1904 in his Blue Period. MASP says the sitter was a lyric singer from a family of musicians. The other was The Coffee Worker by Candido Portinari, which MASP dates to 1934. O Globo reports that the thieves took both with their frames.

The museum was easy to enter. Folha reports that the thieves struck at the guards’ change of shift, that four unarmed guards were on duty, and that the works had no alarm and no sensors. O Globo adds that the old cameras filmed nothing that could identify anyone. Police later said that the group had tried twice before, on 29 October and 18 December 2007, and had failed both times. O Globo reported that neither work was insured.

Police moved fast. Francisco Laerton Lopes de Lima was arrested on 27 December 2007. On 8 January 2008 they arrested Robson de Jesus Jordao, who had escaped from a prison in Valparaiso where he held a semi-open sentence for robbery. He led officers to an empty house in Ferraz de Vasconcelos, in Greater Sao Paulo. Both paintings were inside, covered and undamaged, 19 days after the theft. They went back to MASP under police escort on 9 January, and the museum reopened on 11 January. Staff called the lack of damage a miracle.

Police said that a third man, Moises Manoel de Lima Sobrinho, planned the theft. A fourth, Alexsandro Bezerra da Silva, was accused of keeping the works in a house. Estadao reports that police said the job was ordered and that the thieves were to receive five million reais. The person who ordered it was never named in the sources consulted.

On 4 February 2009 a state judge convicted all four. Jordao received 9 years and 6 months, Lima 8 years and 1 month, and Lima Sobrinho 6 years and 5 months. Silva received about three years, for receiving. In October 2009 the Superior Tribunal de Justica, a high court, annulled the verdict. MASP’s collection is listed by the federal heritage body, so a federal court had to try the case. Federal prosecutors charged the four men in January 2010. In December 2015 a federal appeal court upheld the convictions for aggravated theft, with prison terms of three and a half to five years. The reports do not give the term for each man.

Both paintings are back in the MASP collection, and the museum’s catalogue pages list them. The sources consulted do not say whether they are on display now.