A bust by renowned French artist Auguste Rodin has been stolen from an art gallery in Denmark.

The sculpture - The Man with the Broken Nose - was taken in broad daylight by two thieves who removed it from the Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen.

Dating from 1863, it has a value of around US$300,000 (€266,431).

"It's terrible. We lost an important work in the collection," museum director Flemming Friborg was quoted as saying.

The sculpture was stolen last month but the theft has only just been made public.

Two men dressed as tourists, wearing hats and glasses, walked into the museum, made straight for the Rodin Room, brazenly removed the artwork and took it away in a bag, Denmark News reported.

The daring theft was completed within 12 minutes and the men walked away undetected by both security guards and other museum visitors.

The pair had also visited the museum together nine days earlier, Jakob Fibiger-Andreasen, the museum's head of communications says.

Police have released CCTV images of the men, who they describe as aged between 30 and 40-years-old and between 5ft 7ins and 5ft 9ins tall.

They say they could possibly be of eastern European origin.

The Glyptotek is proud of its Rodin collection, describing it as "unique outside of France". It includes such work as The Thinker and the first cast, outside France, of The Burghers of Calais.