In the city of Ajaccio on the rugged French island of Corsica, a bizarre story unfolded early Saturday morning when a security guard, Antoine Mocellini, stole four artworks — including paintings by Nicolas Poussin and Giovanni Bellini — and held them for ransom, demanding that authorities provide him with a place to live. But when he led police to his car, where he said he had stashed the works of art, it had been broken into and the works had disappeared. Mocellini is currently in custody. The stolen paintings — and whoever pilfered them from the car — remain at large.

Mocellini had served as a security guard some 20 years at Ajaccio's Fine Arts Museum, an institution known to have the second-largest collection of Italian paintings in France, surpassed only by the Louvre. When he finished his shift on Saturday morning, he absconded with one French painting and three Italian Renaissance works from the famed collection: Poussin's "King Midas at the source of the Pactole River," Bellini's "Virgin and Child," Mariotto di Nardo's "Pentecost," and an anonymous Umbrian artist's "Virgin and Child."

The next morning, Mocellini contacted the local television station and asked for a place to live as ransom. A divorced father in his early 40s, he said on camera, "I will ask the prefect to write out nice and clear that he promises that I will have my housing on March 15. I will return the works only if there is this housing," adding that he is "not a hoodlum." He also told the television station that he was driven to this act by the threat of eviction from his apartment and that he had no police record.

He later agreed to lead police to the paintings, which he said he had hidden in his car before parking it on a road a few miles outside of Ajaccio. However, when they arrived, the car's window had been smashed and the artworks had vanished. Mocellini is now being held by local authorities and the French art trafficking squad has launched an investigation. The affair has worried French culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand, who said in a statement that he intends to "carefully follow the development of the investigation."

Ajaccio's Fine Arts Museum only just reopened last June after a two-year renovation. Museum director Philippe Costamagna has appealed to the thieves to return the paintings without harming them, saying that they "are known the world over and are unsellable," according to French television station TF1.

View Slideshow: Desperate Museum Guard Holds Renaissance Masterpieces For Ransom, Only to Have Them Stolen From His Car