Thieves Bag Rodin Sculpture In Daylight Raid

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A bust by renowned French artist Auguste Rodin has been stolen from an art gallery in Denmark.

The sculpture – The Man with the Broken Nose – was taken in broad daylight by two thieves who removed it from the Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen.

Dating from 1863, it has a value of around $300,000 (£190,000).

“It’s terrible. We lost an important work in the collection,” museum director Flemming Friborg was quoted as saying.

The sculpture was stolen last month but the theft has only just been made public.

Two men dressed as tourists, wearing hats and glasses, walked into the museum, made straight for the Rodin Room, brazenly removed the artwork and took it away in a bag.

The daring theft was completed within 12 minutes and the men walked away undetected by both security guards and other museum visitors.

The pair had also visited the museum together nine days earlier, Jakob Fibiger Andreasen,  the museum’s Head of Communications said.

Police have released CCTV images of the men, who they describe as aged between 30 and 40 years old and between 1.70m (5ft 7ins) and 1.75m (5ft 9ins) tall.

They say they could possibly be of eastern European origin.

The Glyptotek is proud of its Rodin collection, describing it as “unique outside of France”.

It includes such work as The Thinker and the first cast, outside France, of The Burghers of Calais.

 

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