A painting stolen by the Nazis that was spotted in an Argentinian estate agent’s advert has vanished, a prosecutor says following a raid on the home.
Portrait of a Lady by Giuseppe Ghislandi was featured hanging above a sofa inside a property near Buenos Aires, which was being sold by the daughter of a senior Nazi who fled Germany after World War Two.
A police raid on the house this week however turned up no painting – but two weapons were seized, federal prosecutor Carlos Martínez told local media.
Mr Martínez said they were treating it as an alleged cover-up of smuggling, Argentinian daily Clarin reported.
The newspaper reported that the furnishings had been rearranged and the picture was missing from the wall when they raided the property.
Peter Schouten of the Dutch Algemeen Dagblad newspaper, which first reported the long-lost artwork’s reappearance, said there was evidence “the painting was removed shortly afterwards or after the media reports about it appeared”.
“There’s now a large rug with horses and some nature scenes hanging there, which police say looks like something else used to hang there”.
Portrait of a Lady was among the collection of Amsterdam art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, much of which was forcibly sold by the Nazis after his death.
Some of the works were recovered in Germany after the war, and put on display in Amsterdam as part of the Dutch national collection.
For more than 80 years, the location of late-baroque Italian portraitist Giuseppe Ghislandi’s painting of the Contessa Colleoni had been unknown until now.
AD’s investigation found wartime documents that suggest the painting was in the possession of Friedrich Kadgien, an SS officer and senior financial aide to Hermann Göring, who fled in 1945 before eventually moving to Argentina, where he became a successful businessman.
Kadgien died in 1979, but a US file seen by AD included the line: “Appears to possess substantial assets, could still be of value to us”.
The paper added that it had made several attempts to speak to his two daughters in Buenos Aires over the years but to no avail.
It was only when one of Kadgien’s daughters put the house up for sale that they made any progress in locating the missing works.
Another looted artwork – a floral still-life by the 17th-century Dutch painter Abraham Mignon – was also spotted on one of the sister’s social media, AD reported.
Following the photo’s appearance, one of the sisters told the Dutch paper she didn’t know what they wanted from her, nor what painting they “are talking about”.
Lawyers for Goudstikker’s estate said they would make every effort to reclaim the painting.
His sole-surviving heir, daughter-in-law Marei von Saher, said her family “aims to bring back every single artwork robbed from Jacques’ collection, and to restore his legacy”.
According to AD, she took possession of 202 pieces in 2006.
