Lost Painting Looted by Nazis Found Hanging on Wall in a Real Estate Listing

A painting looted by Nazis in World War II has been turned over to the Argentine police after a years-long search led the rightful owners to a property listing that showed it hanging on the wall in a living room.

A Dutch investigative news outlet contacted the real estate agency who called the authorities, but when they showed up, the painting was gone.

This tip off from the agency led to four simultaneous police raids last Monday in different parts of Mar del Plata state. One of them was at the home of a descendant of the Nazi party official Friedrich Kadgien who fled to Argentina in 1951.

Kadgien was charged by the Fuhrer with transporting to Switzerland large quantities of hard currency, diamonds, and artworks that had either been stolen by the Nazis or sold to the party under duress from their Jewish owners.

Kadgien fled to Switzerland where the country’s neutrality protected him from extradition. He eventually moved to Argentina, bringing with him Portrait of a Lady, an oil-on-canvas of Italian Countess Colleoni by the artist Vittore Ghislandi.

It was Portrait of a Lady that was identified in the photo by a Dutch newspaper called the Algemeen Dagblad, which was investigating the whereabouts of many stolen artworks that once belonged to another chief character in this story: the Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker.

Goudstikker began a systematic attempt to recover his artworks, stolen by the Nazis, in the 1990s. Portrait of a Lady had already been on a database of stolen and lost art, but leads in Europe turned up nothing.

Many Nazi officials who escaped Germany fled to Argentina, and it was there that Friedrich Kadgien’s daughter Patricia and her husband Juan Carlos Cortegoso, came to inherit the work and possibly others, court documents outlined.

Just as Kadgien’s daughter was in possession of the painting, it was Goudstikker’s daughter, Marei von Saher, who is carrying on the search for some 1,200 lost works that had been acquired by her father, who recently passed away.

Von Saher’s attorney told USA TODAY that the painting was likely sold to Kadgien by the Nazis in 1944, and that it was painted in the 1700s. Her father had tried to keep it and other works, including some by Rembrandt and Van Gogh, hidden in a nook below a 17th century canal in Amsterdam before they fled the advance of the German army, but evidently they were found.

Goudstikker was a good record keeper, and had a black notebook with exquisite details of every painting he hid away—a key resource in the efforts to recover them all.

ALSO CHECK OUT: Surviving the Nazis and Fire, 2000-Year-old Caligula Mosaic Finally Returns to Museum

Just as the Dutchman had tried to hide his property from searches, Patricia Kadgien evidently tried to hide Portrait of a Lady in advance of the police raids. Arriving, the authorities found a tapestry depicting a horse hanging in its place, but wall marks and even a hook behind should that a painting may have been moved. During the raids, multiple drawings and paintings, some of which could be as old as 18th century, were taken into custody, court documents said.

Kadgien and Cortegoso were placed on house arrest, as they could be criminally charged for failing to turn over the paintings earlier. An attorney representing the couple did eventually bring the painting to the National Public Prosecutor’s Office.

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: 101-Year-old Woman Is Amazed After Being Reunited with Her Lost Painting Looted by Nazis

“It is encouraging that the painting is now with the authorities and that it is no longer missing. I am relieved that it’s now in a safe and secure place,” von Saher said in a statement to USA TODAY.

The outlet reported that the $2.5 billion worth of artworks, antiques, jewels and other property confiscated by, or sold under duress to, the Nazis in the 1940s would today be valued at closer to $25 billion, of which Portrait of a Lady is just one small piece, a small piece that nevertheless represents a big victory and huge relief for the descendants of one particular victim.

SHARE The Remarkable Journey Of This Painting To Justice…