Updated on Tuesday, February 27, 2007, 00:00 IST

Oslo, Feb 27: A Norwegian painting featuring 16,311 dollars (12,400 euros) of banknotes glued to a canvas proved too tempting to thieves, who made off with it at the weekend, the gallery that displayed it said Monday.

Some 100,000 bills of 1,000 kroner each were glued to Norwegian artist Jan Christensen's two-by-four-metre (6.5-by-13-foot) canvas, entitled "Relative Value", said the MGM Gallery in Oslo.

The robbers broke into the gallery overnight Saturday to Sunday by smashing a window. Then, proceeding methodically, they cut each bill off the canvas individually and left the cumbersome frame behind.

"Apparently they are nice because they took the canvas out of the frame," gallery owner Marina Gerner-Mathisen told.

The thieves then left the building.

"When the security people arrived a couple of minutes later they were gone," she said.

A police investigation was underway, she said.

Bureau Report