ROME (Reuters) - Masked gunmen broke into a Rome museum and stole two priceless paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and one by Paul Cezanne, museum officials said on Wednesday. They said three gunmen broke into the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome`s Villa Borghese park on Tuesday night, bound and gagged three female guards and locked them in a toilet before making off with the paintings. The works were Van Gogh`s "The Gardener" and "L`Arlesienne" and Cezanne`s "Le Cabanon de Jourdan", thought to be the French post-impressionist`s last oil painting before his death in 1906. Bianca Alessandra Pinto, the museum`s superintendent, said the thieves went straight to them, ignoring other valuable works in adjacent rooms. The paintings were too famous to be sold and Pinto said this suggested the theft may have been commissioned by a collector. The museum`s press officer Elena Di Maio said the thieves entered the museum around closing time - 10.00 p. m. (2000 GMT). According to the guards, they wore gloves and took off their shoes to avoid detection. Di Maio told Reuters Television: "The three paintings all had individual alarms and the museum also has a central alarm system. The thieves made the guards deactivate the alarms." The theft was discovered at around 1.00 a.m. when staff at a bar attached to the museum noticed their alarm system was not working. Di Maio said the gallery was fitted with closed circuit TV but she did not know if the thieves had been caught on film. The gallery bought "Le Cabanon de Jourdan", an oil-on-canvas measuring 61 cm by 85 cm, from a collector in Milan in 1986. Van Gogh painted "The Gardener" at Saint Remy in France in the spring of 1889. Measuring 61 cm by 50 cm, it depicts a gardener with a downcast expression wearing a straw hat. The Dutch master painted "L`Arlesienne" the following year. Italy, with its vast cultural heritage, has been targeted by art thieves many times before.