Five minutes to steal a Renoir: Why museum thefts are becoming bolder across Europe

Image source, Reuters/Museum Renoir Image caption, The latest heist, at the Renoir museum in the south of France, saw thieves break in by cutting through a fence with an electric knife and hacksaw

When thieves broke into a French museum earlier this week and stole four paintings by the impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, worth millions of euros, not everyone was surprised.

Just last month, the European policing agency (Europol) had warned that museum thefts across Europe were growing increasingly brazen.

And just days before the Renoir heist, internationally known art detective Arthur Brand predicted to the BBC that more high-profile burglaries were likely - particularly in the wake of the successful robbery at the Louvre in Paris last October .

The audacious crime in one of the world's most famous museums stunned France, and the stolen jewellery worth €88m (£75m) has still not been recovered, nearly a year on.