Argentina: Nazi-looted Italian painting recovered

Authorities in Argentina announced on Wednesday that a long-lost painting which was looted by the Nazis during the Second World War has been recovered.

'Portrait of a Lady' is in 'good condition,' art expert says 

"It's in good condition given its age," art expert Ariel Bassano told reporters, adding that "Portrait of a Lady," an 18th-century work by the Italian painter Giuseppe Ghislandi, was being "stored in a special chamber" for safekeeping. Bassano has been assisting Argentine authorities with their investigation into the painting.    

The portrait, which Bassano dates to 1710 and values at roughly $50,000 (almost €43,000) was in the possession of Dutch-Jewish art collector Jacques Goudstikker before he was killed in a shipwreck while trying to escape Amsterdam in 1940.

Shortly after Goudstikker died, his extensive art collection was looted by the Nazis.

Goudstikker's extensive inventory was auctioned off to Hermann Göring, the head of the Nazi Luftwaffe and Adolf Hitler's right-hand man, but it disappeared at the end of the war in 1945.

How was the stolen painting found?

The artwork was missing until last month when it was spotted hanging on the wall in an online real estate listing in the Argentine coastal city of Mar del Plata by Dutch journalists researching the history of Nazi lawyer Friedrich Kadgien.

Responsible among other things for the management of confiscated Jewish property in the Third Reich, and a senior legal advisor to Göring, Kadgien survived the war and escaped to Argentina in 1949, where he lived until 1978.

The real estate listing on which the full-length portrait of Countess Colleoni is visible appears to have been unwittingly uploaded by one of Kadgien's daughters. It was quickly taken down, but not before it had been published in the Dutch Algemeen Dagblad newspaper last Monday.

Police raided the rustic Mar del Plata home of Patricia Kadgien, but the painting wasn't there. Authorities also raided other homes belonging to the Kadgien sisters, seizing paintings and engravings that they also suspected of having been stolen during the 1940s.

Patricia Kagdien and her husband, whose lawyer handed over the painting on Wednesday, have been placed under house arrest pending a hearing Thursday on charges of concealment and obstruction of justice.

"It was people from the community, specifically journalists, who prompted the investigation," said Argentine federal prosecutor Daniel Adler. "We're doing this simply so that the community to whom we partly owe the discovery of the work ... can see these images."

Edited by: Wesley Dockery