A late-Baroque portrait stolen from a Jewish arts dealer in Europe by the Nazis during World War II has surfaced in Argentina, having been featured in an online real-estate ad, a Dutch newspaper reported on Monday.
“Portrait of a Lady” by Vittore Ghislandi, an Italian painter who died in 1743, belonged to the Dutch Jewish collector Jacques Goudstikker.
In 2006, government-commissioned investigators determined that hundreds of artworks from his massive collection had been seized or bought under duress by the Nazis and were therefore looted. More than 200 of them were restituted in the early 2000s, but many remained missing.
In recent weeks, “Portrait of a Lady” was seen on a real estate listing in Argentina, where it casually appeared as part of the asset’s interior decoration, the AD newspaper reported. The paper’s research into how the painting got there led to Friedrich Kadgien, who had served as top Nazi official Hermann Göring’s financial adviser. Kadgien fled to Argentina after World War II and died there.
The house advertised in the listing belongs to one of his daughters, according to AD. She told the paper she did not know what painting they meant and then said she was too busy to answer their queries, according to AD. Two experts told the paper they believed the painting was authentic, fit the known dimensions for the artwork and that there would be little incentive to forge the painting.
Similar artworks by Ghislandi have fetched only several thousand dollars, and some even less, at auction in recent years.
An heir of Jaques Goudstikker, Marei von Saher, told AD she planned to file a claim and launch legal action to have the painting restored to her family.
