Argentine court clears return of Nazi-looted portrait to Jewish dealer’s heir
The agreement ends an 80-year search and lets Marei von Saher recover the painting after experts valued it at about $290,000.
- On Friday, an Argentine court approved returning the 18th-century "Portrait of a Lady" to Marei von Saher, heir of Dutch-Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, ending a legal dispute over the Nazi-looted work.
- The painting was among more than 1,000 artworks stolen from Goudstikker's collection after the 1940 Nazi invasion of the Netherlands; it later surfaced in Argentina in the possession of Friedrich Kadgien, a fugitive Nazi financial official.
- Dutch reporters spotted the work in an online real estate listing in August 2025, prompting police raids in Mar del Plata, Argentina, that recovered the painting alongside two 19th-century works and other prints.
- Under the agreement, Patricia Kadgien and her husband Juan Carlos Cortegoso consented to return the artwork and submit to two years of court supervision, avoiding criminal trial while making payments to local hospitals.
- Von Saher intends to exhibit the portrait in Buenos Aires for one year before repatriation; experts now attribute the work to Italian artist Giacomo Antonio Melchiorre Ceruti, differing from prior identification as Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi.
43 Articles
43 Articles
The “Portrait of a Lady”, by the Italian painter Giuseppe Ghislandi, was spotted in 2025 on a photograph published in a real estate ad. It could now be exhibited for a year in Buenos Aires.
Giuseppe Ghislandi's painting Portrait of a Woman has been rediscovered eighty years after it was stolen by the Nazi army from an Amsterdam art dealer.
The work of art, a portrait of an 18th century woman, resurfaced in Mar del Plata last year. A federal court has just ordered its return to the heiress of the Dutch Jewish gallery owner from whom it was stolen.
The "Portrait of a Lady" is one of more than 1,000 artworks stolen from a Jewish collection after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands. Decades later, it suddenly reappeared in an Argentinian real estate advertisement. Now, a legal settlement has been reached.
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