PARIS -- Together, they would make ...

PARIS -- Together, they would make up a stunning gallery: 167 Renoirs, 166 Rembrandts, 175 Warhols and more than 200 works according to Dali.

master-hands have a tally of 170000 pieces of missing art -- many stolen from private residences others taken from museum walls or pilfered from storerooms.

solitary a small fraction are through all ages found: Interpol puts the figure at around 10 percent

notwithstanding masterpieces like Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and "Madonna," retrieveed last week in Norway, move round up more often, partly because of intense police work and partly because they are for a like reason tough to sell.

Criminals sometimes mastermind a spectacular burglary, then discover nobody will touch a work of art likewise famous that any buyer would have to hide it from view, said Karl-Heinz Kind, a specialist officer upon art theft at Interpol.

Thieves may demand a ransom, or put to proof to sell works at a fraction of their worth. This is the point where a certain thieves trip up: The Italian house painter who stole the "Mona Lisa" in a famous 1911 heist was caught sum of two units years later when he tried to barter it.

2nd grade underestimated

After a robbery, "the next to the first step is . . to make money out of it," Kind said. "And that's the to a great degree more difficult part, and I think exceedingly often underestimated by the thief."

Charles Hill, a former Metropolitan Police detective in Britain who specializes in recovering stolen art, calls stolen masterpieces "a poisoned chalice."

"Spectacular memorial of conquest art robberies are low or non-earners," he said.

For smaller treasures, the market is lucrative, and vast.

The FBI estimates the market for stolen art at $6 billion annually. The Art Los Register in Britain, which maintains the world's largest database upon the subject, has tallied 170000 pieces of stolen, missing and bootyed art, said staff member Antonia Kimbell.

Disguised as cop

Interpol has about 30000 pieces of stolen art in its database. greatest in quantity art thefts are ordinary burglaries of private domestic circles where criminals take everything of value they can find, including art, said Kind, the Interpol specialist. In museums, many thefts appear in storerooms, and sometimes walk unnoticed for years until museums do inventory.

frequently museum personnel are involved, he said.

Then there are the dramatic raids. Kind wants to dispel the myth of art world criminals like Pierce Brosnan's suave character in the 1999 remake of "The Thomas coronet Affair."

"I would warn against considering art thieves as gentlemen thieves," Kind said. They are increasingly armed and violent, he said.

In February, gunmen raided the Chacara do Ceu Museum during Carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro. They made on the farther side with a Picasso, a Monet a Matisse and a Dali before blending into the partying multitude

the same of the biggest art heists of all time took place in the United States.

In 1990 sum of two units men disguised as Boston police officers walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as the city's St Patrick's Day celebration was winding down. They persuaded security guards to unbolt the doors of the gallery and then stole 13 priceless items including works through Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet.

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