Nazi-Looted Portrait Shows Up in a Real Estate Listing in Argentina—Then Quickly Disappears
A Dutch newspaper identified a portrait hanging above a sofa that was looted by Reichs Marshal Herman Göring.
The Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (AD), in a collaboration with a Dutch retiree named Paul Post, has sleuthed out in a highly improbable way the location of a painting looted by the Nazis. The canvas showed up in a real estate listing offering a home in Mar del Plata, Argentina, owned by the daughter of a German official.
Portrait of a Lady (Contessa Colleoni) is by Giuseppe Ghislandi, also known as Fra’ Galgario. Bram de Klerck, associate professor of art history at Radboud University, described him as “one of the most important portraitists in northern Italy of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.” His works reside in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (which describes him as “especially famous in his day as a naturalistic portraitist”); the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo; the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; and the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers, among other institutions.
The painting appears in the Lost Art Database, which indicates that it was looted by the Nazis in Amsterdam in July 1940 from legendary Dutch Jewish dealer Jacques Goudstikker. During the invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, Goudstikker attempted to escape by ship, but died in an accidental fall on board. In his family’s luggage was an inventory of some 1,100 works of art then in his possession (including eight Rembrandts and two Vermeers), which were sold at depressed prices to Reich Marshal Hermann Göring and other Nazis.
Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker in the 1930s.
The painting was sold by German banker Alois Miedl to Friedrich Kadgien, right-hand man to Göring. Kadgien, was partly responsible for the Four-Year Plan to finance Germany’s rearmament, and fled to Switzerland in 1945, likely with some looted art. He later moved via Brazil to Argentina, where he founded a company, started a family, and died in Buenos Aires in 1978.
One of Kadgien’s two daughters, now living in a town on the Argentine coast, put her home up for sale via Robles Casas and Campos. Ghislandi’s painting hangs in full view over the couch. The owner, per La Nacion, is Patricia Kadgien. Those living nearby describe her as a good neighbor, who taught yoga classes in the garage.
The Dutch National Agency for Cultural Heritage also lists the canvas as missing. Two experts said: “There is no reason to think of why this could be a copy.”
Ghislandi’s auction record was achieved at Sotheby’s London in 2011 for his Portrait of a young man in a green tunic, which sold for £325,250 ($520,316), four times its high estimate, according to the Artnet Price Database.
“I don’t know what information you want from me and I don’t know what painting you’re talking about either,” the homeowner said. She asked for questions to be sent in writing but then replied, “Sorry, I’m too busy to answer them right now.” The newspaper has heard nothing from her since then.
When police showed up at the home, the painting was nowhere to be found, reports Argentinian publication La Capital. Hanging in its place is a large tapestry, reported La Nacion, which confirmed that the listing has been removed from Robles Casas and Campos’s website.
“My search for the works of art of my father-in-law, Jacques Goudstikker, began in the late 1990s and I have not given up until today,” Marei von Saher said. “It is my family’s goal to find every work of art stolen from the Goudstikker collection, and to restore Jacques’ legacy.”
This is just the latest work from the Goudstikker holdings that Von Saher has set her sights on. The Goudstikker Art Research Project manages restitution claims.
In 2023, a painting attributed to Dutch artist Cornelis van Haarlem was returned after being offered for donation by a private collector to France’s Musée Rolin, which also indicates that the year before, the German city of Trier returned a 17th-century Dutch painting by Adam van Breen, Ice Skating, following a legal claim.
In 2018, Von Saher lost an 11-year legal fight to regain control of two contested 16th-century oil-on-panel paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder from the Norton Simon Museum, in Pasadena, California; the Supreme Court declined to take up the case in 2019. In 2017, she had secured the return of an Anthony van Dyck portrait from German food processing giant Dr. Oetker.
The Ghislandi portrait may not be the only looted artwork still in the Kadgien family’s holdings. The National Agency for Cultural Heritage researchers also saw, on one daughter’s social media, a still life by the Dutch 17th-century painter Abraham Mignon that was in Friedrich Kadgien’s hands and is listed as missing.
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