Argentina orders house arrest for daughter of Nazi fugitive over plundered portrait

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentine prosecutors on Tuesday announced that the daughter of a fugitive Nazi officer who stole an 18th-century Italian painting from a Jewish collector during World War II was placed under house arrest along with her husband.

The new measures followed a series of police raids late Monday on homes linked to Patricia Kadgien and her husband, Juan Carlos Cortegoso, in the Argentine coastal city of Mar del Plata.

Patricia Kadgien is one of the daughters of Friedrich Kadgien, a financial adviser to Hermann Göring, the right-hand man of Adolf Hitler and an art aficionado who plundered famous paintings through the forced sale of Jewish-owned galleries in the Nazi-occupied Europe. Kadgien fled to Argentina after WWII and died in Buenos Aires in 1978.

The Baroque “Portrait of a Lady” by the Italian painter Giuseppe Ghislandi (1655–1743) had been missing for 80 years before appearing last month in a real estate listing, which showed the artwork hanging above a green couch in Patricia Kadgien’s living room. Experts from the Netherlands’ Cultural Heritage Agency dated Ghislandi’s portrait of Countess Colleoni to the 18th century.

The portrait, listed as missing on international and Dutch databases of Nazi-confiscated works, was one of more than 1,000 pieces stolen by Göring from prominent Dutch-Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker.

The surprise discovery of the missing painting by journalists from the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad last month thrilled art historians and Goudstikker’s heirs who have been seeking to recover his stolen inventory for decades. But as news of the find shot across the world, “Portrait of a Lady” disappeared once again.

Argentine police entered Kadgien’s house last Tuesday only to find a tapestry of a horse hanging above the green couch where the stolen artwork had been spotted online.

Police late Monday raided the house again, along with two other homes and an apartment in Mar del Plata linked to the Kadgien family, in search of more clues to the painting’s whereabouts, the federal prosecutors’ office said Tuesday.

They seized various prints and engravings, as well as two paintings from the home of Kadgien’s sister, which experts assessed could date back to the 1800s. But they did not find “Portrait of a Lady.”

Carlos Martínez, the prosecutor who is in charge of the investigation, told The Associated Press that he accused the couple of obstructing the investigation and ordered their detention at home for at least 72 hours pending a hearing.

Martínez said Kadgien family’s defence team had offered to hand over the painting but has not done so yet.

Débora Rey And Isabel Debre, The Associated Press