An auction of a collection of 55 masterpieces that once belonged to the convicted founder of bankrupted Italian food conglomerate began on Tuesday in Milan after years of painstaking detective work to recover the hidden canvases.

Paintings by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Vassily Kandinsky, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Marc Chagall are among those being sold off in what was touted as one of Italy’s biggest Post-War art auctions ever.

Courts ordered that profits from the sale of Calisto Tanzi’s vast collection go towards paying off creditors still waiting to be compensated 16 years after Italian dairy giant Parmalat collapsed suddenly in Europe’s biggest bankruptcy.

“I have never seen such a collection of works of this importance go to auction in Italy,” said Pietro De Bernardi of Pandolfini Casa d’Aste, the auction house organising the Milan event, in La Stampa.

The Florentine auction house valued the collection at between €6-8 million (£5.2-7 million), but some market observers suggest it could be twice that.