An 18th-century masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady by Italian painter Giuseppe Ghislandi, looted by the Nazis during the Second World War, has been recovered in Argentina, an Argentine federal court announced on Wednesday. The painting, publicly presented in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, had not been seen in public for 80 years.
Its whereabouts came to light last month when the first-ever colour photograph of the portrait surfaced in an online real estate listing. This listing was unwittingly posted by a daughter of Friedrich Kadgien, a fugitive Nazi officer accused of stealing the painting from one of Europe’s most prominent pre-war art dealers and collectors.
“We’re doing this simply so that the community to whom we partly owe the discovery of the work … can see these images,” federal prosecutor Daniel Adler said in a press conference to display the full-length portrait of Countess Colleoni, her hair ink-black and dress embroidered with pastel flowers.
“It was people from the community, specifically journalists, who prompted the investigation,” Adler said.
Dutch journalists made the shocking discovery while investigating Kadgien’s past in Argentina, where the high-ranking official fled after the collapse of the Third Reich and later died in 1978. News of the find thrilled historians the world over and eventually reached the heirs of the painting’s original owner, Dutch-Jewish art collector Jacques Goudstikker. He died in a shipwreck after fleeing Amsterdam ahead of advancing German troops in May 1940.
His descendants have sought to recover an estimated 1,100 paintings missing since the forced sale of Goudstikker’s extensive inventory to Adolf Hitler’s right-hand man, Hermann Göring, who built up a major art collection during WWII.
The original appearance of “Portrait of a Lady” last week was fleeting. Within hours of the story’s publication in Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad last Monday, the real estate listing was taken down. Police raided the rustic Mar del Plata home of Patricia Kadgien, the Nazi officer’s daughter, but the painting wasn’t there.
Authorities earlier this week conducted further raids on several homes belonging to the Kadgien sisters in Mar del Plata, seizing other paintings and engravings that they also suspect of having been stolen during the 1940s.
Argentina’s federal prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday they had ordered the detention of Kadgien and her husband pending a hearing on charges of concealment and obstruction of justice.
Adler, the prosecutor, told reporters that the couple’s lawyer had handed over the painting to authorities earlier Wednesday. He did not give any indication of where the painting would go next.
An art expert invited to assist with the investigation, Ariel Bassano, said the painting was being “stored in a special chamber to prevent contact with external agents and, later, with either artificial or natural light, which could eventually damage it”.
“It’s in good condition given its age,” Bassano said, dating the portrait to 1710 and valuing it at roughly $50,000 (£37,200).
It’s not clear exactly how the painting came into the possession of Kadgien, who worked as a financial adviser to Göring.
