Argentine police hunted Wednesday for a 17th century painting which was allegedly stolen by the Nazis from a Dutch Jewish art collector and resurfaced this week in a property ad, only to disappear again.
The painting, believed to be “Portrait of a Lady” by Italian baroque portraitist Giuseppe Ghislandi (1655-1743) was identified by the Dutch newspaper AD on Monday in a picture of a house for sale in the seaside resort of Mar del Plata.
The authenticity of the artwork cannot be proven until it is recovered but it is believed to have been stolen from Amsterdam art dealer Jacques Goudstikker during World War II.
In the for-sale notice of the house in Mar del Plata, published by Robles Casas & Campos realtors, the painting of a noblewoman in a gilded frame was seen hanging in the living room, above a green sofa.
After AD journalists spotted it, Argentine prosecutor Carlos Martinez ordered a search of the residence.
But while firearms were seized during Tuesday’s raid, the painting had disappeared.
“The painting is gone. Only a carbine and a .32-caliber revolver were seized,” the prosecutor told reporters.
The property has also been removed from the website of Robles Casas & Campos, who did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.
The international police agency Interpol is assisting in the investigation.
The Mar del Plata house is believed to belong to Patricia Kadgien, daughter of the late Friedrich Kadgien, a senior SS officer who fled to Argentina after the war.
Kadgien has not been charged in the affair.
Her lawyer, Carlos Murias, told La Capital, a local newspaper in Mar del Plata, that she and her husband would cooperate with the authorities.
Goudstikker’s heirs are determined to recover the painting, which appears on an international list of missing artworks.
“My search for the artwork of my father-in-law, Jacques Goudstikker, began in the late 1990s and I have not abandoned it to this day,” Goudstikker’s daughter-in-law, Marei von Saher, 81, told AD.
The Netherlands’ cultural heritage agency, dedicated to the identification, tracking, and restitution of cultural objects stolen by the Nazis, also lists the painting as missing on its website.
Jacques Goudstikker, a leading dealer of Italian and Dutch 16th- and 17th-century masters during the wars, fled the Netherlands days after the Nazi invasion in 1940.
– Hundreds of missing paintings –
He died while escaping on board a ship to Britain after falling through a hatch.
His wife and son traveled on to the United States.
Goudstikker left behind an extensive art collection of over 1,000 paintings.
Top German officials, led by Gestapo founder Hermann Goering, divvied up the collection.
After the war the Dutch state retrieved some 300 works from the collection, most of which it later returned to Goudstikker’s heirs.
In 2011, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles returned a 17th century Dutch painting from Goudstikker’s collection.
Many other works remain scattered around the globe.
