A court in Argentina has placed under house arrest as police continue to search for a Nazi-looted painting that appeared in the real estate listing for a house in Mar del Plata.
Painted by Giuseppe Ghislandi, the work appears in a database for lost art and once belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a Jewish dealer who was based in Amsterdam prior to the rise of the Nazis. Goudstikker sold some of the Old Masters works in his holdings; some of those paintings have since been returned to his heirs.
The Ghislandi painting was spotted last week by the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, which reported that the work could be seen in a real estate listing for a house in the coastal town of Mar del Plata. That listing has since been deleted, and the police have begun investigating the painting’s whereabouts.
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According to the Associated Press, the house belongs to Patricia Kadgien and her husband Juan Carlos Cortegoso, according to the Associated Press. Kadgien is the daughter of a Nazi official who fled Germany and spent his final years in Argentina.
During the raid, the police failed to locate the artwork. But as the search continues, Kadgien and Cortegoso have been placed under house arrest on order from a federal court in Argentina.
Kadgien and her husband told the Argentine publication La Nación they inherited the Ghislandi painting.
Meanwhile, Argentine prosecutors also have their eyes on two other works held by another Kadgien daughter. Those works were seized, prosecutors told La Nación, so that they could be “analyzed to determine if they are linked to paintings stolen during World War II.”