Journalists Stumble Across Real Estate Listing With a Photo of a Nazi-Looted Painting Hanging Above the Couch
The family of a Nazi official has turned in “Portrait of a Lady,” an 18th-century artwork by the Italian painter Giuseppe Ghislandi. The painting had been stolen from a Jewish art dealer during World War II
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More than 80 years after a high-ranking Nazi official stole a painting from a Jewish art dealer, his descendants have turned the work over to authorities. The return comes about a week after a Dutch reporter spotted the artwork by chance in a real estate listing.
The long-lost Portrait of a Lady was painted by Giuseppe Ghislandi, an 18th-century Italian artist. During World War II, it had belonged to a well-known Dutch Jewish art dealer named Jacques Goudstikker. It was looted by the Nazi official Friedrich Kadgien, who fled to Argentina after the war. He eventually passed down the artwork to his daughter, Patricia Kadgien, who gave it to the authorities on September 3.
“The family’s lawyer brought it; he showed up at the prosecutor’s office and said he wanted to hand over the painting we were looking for, and nothing else,” Carlos Martínez, the federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation, tells the New York Times’ Claire Moses and Daniel Politi.
Quick fact: How many artworks and other objects did the Nazis steal?
Around the time of World War II, the Nazis looted roughly 600,000 artworks, religious objects, books and other items.
Prosecutors say the couple tried to hide the stolen artwork, according to the Guardian’s Facundo Iglesia. On Thursday, they will be attending a hearing on charges of concealment and obstruction of justice.
The Ghislandi portrait, which had not been seen since the 1940s and had long been listed in numerous lost art databases, was the subject of an investigation by the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad. Last week, the newspaper made a major breakthrough.
While scrolling through a real estate website for Argentina’s coastal city of Mar del Plata, one of the paper’s reporters found a listing for Kadgien’s house. In the listing was the first-known color photograph of Portrait of a Lady, seen hanging prominently in a thick gold frame above a green couch.
“In the 20 years that we’ve been doing this work, we’ve never experienced this, that a painting emerges like this,” Perry Schrier, a researcher at the government-run Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, tells the Times.
Hours after Algemeen Dagblad published its story about the portrait’s reemergence, the real estate listing disappeared, according to the Associated Press’ Isabel DeBre and Bruno Verdenelli. When prosecutors entered the Mar del Plata property the following day, the painting was gone.
During additional raids at other properties belonging to family members, authorities uncovered two more paintings that may date to the 19th century, as well as a collection of drawings and engravings, according to the Guardian. Experts are trying to find out if those works were also stolen during the war.
Portrait of a Lady is one of more than 1,000 artworks from Goudstikker’s collection that Hermann Göring, a powerful member of the Nazi party, acquired in a forced sale. Kadgien had been a financial adviser to Göring.
Goudstikker died while fleeing from the Nazis in 1940, but his wife held onto a small notebook that the art dealer used to catalog his inventory. That notebook has been a key piece of evidence in the fight to reclaim the art that was taken from him. According to the Times, the Goudstikker family has made a legal claim for the painting’s return.
“My first thought was that I am sure there are a lot of these around the world,” Charlène von Saher, Goudstikker’s granddaughter, tells the Times. “These works have survived already hundreds of years and may survive another few hundreds and not be returned to the rightful owners.”
After the war’s end, many high-ranking Nazi officials fled to South America. Kadgien escaped the Netherlands in 1946 and eventually settled in Argentina, where his two daughters were born, according to the Guardian. He died in Buenos Aires in 1978.
“The big question we have is what the daughters know about this painting,” Cyril Rosman, one of the reporters who uncovered the painting, tells the Times. “Do they know the history? Why would you give the painting such a prominent place if you know it’s been looted?”