![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Looted-painting-displayed-in-press-conference-by-Mar-del-Plata-Prosecutors-Office-in-Argentina-By-Be.jpeg\")
Looted painting displayed in press conference by Mar del Plata Prosecutors Office in Argentina Credit: Belen Cano for Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office<\/p>\n Looted painting displayed in press conference by Mar del Plata Prosecutors Office in Argentina Credit: Belen Cano for Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
A Dutch investigative news outlet contacted the real estate agency who called the authorities, but when they showed up, the painting was gone.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Kadgien fled to Switzerland where the country\u2019s neutrality protected him from extradition. He eventually moved to Argentina, bringing with him\u00a0Portrait of a Lady,\u00a0an oil-on-canvas of Italian Countess Colleoni by the artist Vittore Ghislandi.<\/p>\n
It was\u00a0Portrait of a Lady\u00a0that 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.<\/p>\n
Goudstikker began a systematic attempt to recover his artworks, stolen by the Nazis, in the 1990s.\u00a0Portrait of a Lady\u00a0had already been on a database of stolen and lost art, but leads in Europe turned up nothing.<\/p>\n
Many Nazi officials who escaped Germany fled to Argentina, and it was there that Friedrich Kadgien\u2019s daughter Patricia and her husband Juan Carlos Cortegoso, came to inherit the work and possibly others, court documents outlined.<\/p>\n
Just as Kadgien\u2019s daughter was in possession of the painting, it was Goudstikker\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Von Saher\u2019s attorney told USA TODAY<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n Goudstikker was a good record keeper, and had a black notebook with exquisite details of every painting he hid away\u2014a key resource in the efforts to recover them all.<\/p>\n ALSO CHECK OUT: <\/strong>Surviving the Nazis and Fire, 2000-Year-old Caligula Mosaic Finally Returns to Museum<\/a><\/p>\n Just as the Dutchman had tried to hide his property from searches, Patricia Kadgien evidently tried to hide\u00a0Portrait of a Lady\u00a0in 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n