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In a stealthy overnight heist, burglars slipped into the Paris apartment of Picasso’s granddaughter and spirited away two portraits of women the artist loved, slicing one of the paintings out of its frame.
The thieves were so quiet that the two people in Diana Widmaier-Picasso’s apartment didn’t hear them, police said. The burglars left few clues, and police said they weren’t sure how the intruders gained entry.

The two paintings — one of Pablo Picasso’s daughter Maya, the other of his second wife, Jacqueline — together are worth an estimated $66 million.

The paintings join 549 other missing or stolen works by the prolific Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist and ceramist, considered by many the leading artist of the 20th Century. Picasso produced more than 20,000 works of art during his long career.

Art experts say that if the burglars hope to sell the paintings, they may be in for a surprise.

Any work by Picasso is “very hard to fence because it’s so well-known — stealing a Picasso is like stealing a sign that says, `I’m a thief,”‘ said Jonathan Sazonoff, who runs a leading Web site on stolen art.

Katie Dugdale of the Art Loss Register, which maintains the world’s largest private database on stolen, missing and looted art, said that although it is difficult, famous artworks can be sold on the black market.

“Even though they can’t get full value, there’s still some value, unfortunately,” she said, particularly if the artworks are used to fund other illegal activities, such as arms trading.

In high-profile cases like the theft of the Picassos in Paris, recovery is considered likely because of intense media attention and ramped-up police efforts.

“Usually with things like this, they’re recovered right away,” Dugdale said, noting that the paintings, already recognizable, will become nearly universally so after their images appear in the media. For most works, she said the average recovery time is seven years.

Investigators said Wednesday that they were struggling to piece together what happened.

Burglars entered the apartment in a chic corner of the Left Bank late Monday or early Tuesday, according to police and the prosecutor’s office. Police said they were examining a door lock to see whether it was broken and didn’t know whether the alarm system had been activated. Once inside the apartment, the thieves cut the edges of one painting, “Maya and the Doll,” to take it out of its frame, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The painting has sentimental value for Widmaier-Picasso: It shows her mother, Maya, as a girl in pigtails, eyes askew in an off-kilter Cubist perspective. Another version hangs in the Picasso Museum in Paris.

Maya was Picasso’s daughter. Her mother was Marie-Therese Walter, whom Picasso met when she was a teenager. Their affair didn’t last. Four years after Picasso died in 1973, she hanged herself.

Maya Picasso married Pierre Widmaier and had three children, including art historian Diana Widmaier-Picasso, author of a book called “Picasso: Art Can Only be Erotic.”

The other missing painting is “Portrait of Jacqueline,” and the burglars took the frame with it, police said. The painting was one of many that depict Picasso’s second wife, Jacqueline Roque, whom he married in 1961 when he was 79 and she was in her mid-30s.