It is the latest in a long serious of thefts of the legendary Spanish artist's work in the French capital, where he produced some of his finest work.

Police said the book was taken from the Picasso Museum in the Marais district of the city, close to the River Seine, on Monday night or early on Tuesday morning.

There was no sign of a break-in, suggesting that professional art criminals could well be behind the crime.

Alarms in the fortified museum were somehow switched off, and no windows were smashed or doors broken open.

For the quarter ended April 30, net profits fell to $24.3 million, or 20 cents a share, on a 21.7 percent drop in sales to $523.1 million. "Despite reduced consumer demand in the luxury sector, Tiffany is, and is projected to remain, solidly profitable and will generate substantial cash from operations," said Michael Kowalski, chairman and chief executive officer.

The company is now one month into its second quarter and Kowalski said the rate of sales decline has lessened slightly in the Americas and more so in the rest of the world. Tiffany expects sales to fall by about 11 percent this year.

The $61.4 million total was about a quarter of the tally of a year ago and well below the auction house's low estimate of $81.5 million. Picasso's robin-egg blue portrait of the artist's daughter and a bronze cat by Swiss sculptor Giacometti had each been estimated to fetch up to $24 million.

"They took a big hit in terms of credibility by not selling those two pieces," said Andrea Crane of Gagosian Gallery. "Those estimates were way too aggressive." A packed crowd couldn't mask the mood. Yawns and raised eyebrows littered the suited and Louboutin-shod spectators, as Sotheby's had its smallest tally for the category since the $33.1 million two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

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The Picasso was offered by William Achenbaum, a New York real-estate developer and chairman of Gansevoort Hotel Group, according to a dealer with knowledge of the collector’s holdings, who declined to be named. Achenbaum was an investor with Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme, according to a filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Art historian Werner Spies described the portrait as "the most impressive Picasso ever devoted to a single child". Like many of his favourite portraits of family members, the piece remained in Picasso's personal collection for 35 years until his death in 1973. Following this, it has been in a private collection since the 1980s.

The painting has never been offered at auction before and the Sotheby's exhibition is its first public showing in London. Emmanuel Di-Donna, Vice Chairman of Impressionist & Modern Art Worldwide said: "This life-affirming portrait reflects the great joy that Maya brought into the artist's life, even on the eve of the Second World War."

The 2 ½-inch wide circular Paloma Rattle consists of nine linked sterling-silver balls. The seams could open and release small beads, which could pose a choking hazard, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said in a notice earlier this month. Once open, the seams' jagged edges could also pose a hazard. No injuries have been reported, the commission said.

The recalled rattles were made in Spain for Tiffany and were sold in March. Tiffany initiated the recall after routine product-safety testing by the commission prompted concerns, the agency said. Consumers should take the rattles away from babies and return them to the store for a refund or credit.

Tiffany and Co. agreed to pay a $262,500 civil penalty to settle allegations that it failed to report a hazard with its infant teether rattles, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said Wednesday. The New York-based luxury jeweler recalled about 3,700 teether rattles in February 2005 because of the choking and aspiration risks they pose to babies. CPSC alleged that Tiffany failed to report in a timely manner that the center bar on the Farm Teether Rattle could break, releasing small beads and animal figures.

Tiffany and Company received at least three reports of defective joints in the teethers between November 2003 and February 2004. In one incident, a baby was reported to have mouthed a small animal figure that fell off of the teether rattle. Tiffany's failed to notify consumers who had purchased the teether and did not report the problem to CPSC until after the Commission had opened its own investigation, the CSPC said.

As part of the settlement, Tiffany's denied it violated the Consumer Product Safety Act by failing to report defects with its Farm Teether Rattles in a timely manner.

It had been expected to sell for upwards of $40 million, but the winning bid of $95,216,000, including commission, caught even Sotheby's officials by surprise. "I was hoping for 70-plus," said David Norman, Sotheby's co-chair of Impressionist and modern art, after the sale. "We thought it was worth more, and we were right."

Even Tobias Meyer, the usually unflappable auctioneer, admitted he was surprised when the bidding passed $65 million. "The energy in the room was incredible," he said. "There's just a very clear, strong demand for the kind of intense painting with an emotional pull that the Picasso represents; things that are made for our times," Given a less-than robust economy, Norman said he was "surprised, thrilled and grateful," at the sale's result "but I wasn't expecting a poor sale. We knew there's a tremendous pool of money out there," he said.

The auction of Impressionist and modern art brought in a total of $207,564,800, it's third highest sales figure ever, Sotheby's said. "I didn't dare hope we'd do this well," said Norman. Two works owned by disgraced Tyco head Dennis Kozlowski and being sold by court order to offset fines and restitution also achieved solid prices. Monet's "Near Monte-Carlo (Cape Martin: The point)" sold for just over $5 million, while Renoir's "Flowers and fruit" went for just over $2.8 million.