Prosecutors in Argentina have charged the daughter of a fugitive Nazi officer with trying to hide an 18th-century painting that was stolen from a Jewish art dealer during the Second World War from authorities.
The federal prosecutor in charge of the case announced the cover-up charge a day after Patricia Kadgien, one of the daughters of high-level Nazi officer Friedrich Kadgien, handed “Portrait of a Lady” by Italian artist Giuseppe Ghislandi to the Argentinian authorities – eight decades after it was stolen.
The fate of the work remains unclear, pending a decision in the case. The heir of Jacques Goudstikker – the Dutch-Jewish art collector who owned the painting before Nazis confiscated his world-famous inventory – has made a legal claim to get the painting back, her lawyers have said.
Goudstikker died in a shipwreck in 1940 while fleeing the Netherlands as German troops advanced. He sold his collection, which included Rembrandts and Vermeers, under duress and far below market price. At least 1,100 stolen works from his gallery remain missing.
The Argentine court has asked that the painting be displayed at the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires ahead of any further transfer abroad. The museum did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Patricia Kadgien, 59, and her husband, Juan Carlos Cortegoso, 62, have been under house arrest on suspicion of concealing the painting since police raided their home on Monday for the second time in as many weeks without finding “Portrait of a Lady.”
Kadgien, with disheveled dirty-blond hair and sunglasses on her head, wore a look that mixed concern and puzzlement as she listened to Prosecutor Carlos Martínez in a jam-packed courtroom. Martínez said that Kadgien’s and her husband’s efforts to hide the painting over several days following its sudden appearance in a real estate listing amounted to obstruction of justice.
Cortegoso gazed straight ahead, his arms crossed and a stern expression on his face.
After the hearing the couple was released from house arrest but barred from traveling abroad and required to notify the court whenever they leave their registered address.
Photos of the painting hanging in Kadgien’s living room in Mar del Plata surfaced last month for the first time in eight decades in an online real estate advertisement.
Dutch journalists investigating Kadgien’s past in Argentina – where he took refuge after the collapse of the Third Reich – spotted “Portrait of a Lady” hanging above a green velvet couch in the living room during a 3D tour of the house for sale.
After recognizing it as the same portrait listed as missing in international archives of Nazi-looted art, the newspaper Algemeen Dagblad published an exposé on Aug. 25 that grabbed headlines around the world.
Alerted by international police agency Interpol, Argentine authorities raided the house and other properties belonging to Patricia Kadgien and her sister Alicia, seizing a rifle, a .32-caliber revolver and several paintings from the 19th-century that they suspect may have been similarly stolen during WWII.
But police couldn’t find “Portrait of a Lady.” They found scuff marks and a pastoral tapestry on Patricia Kadgien’s living room wall where the portrait had been photographed.
The real estate ad, first posted in February, was swiftly taken down. Prosecutors on Thursday said that security footage showed people removing the “for sale” sign from Kadgien’s front yard as media scrutiny intensified last week.
In presenting the charges, Martínez told the court that the couple was “aware that the artwork was being sought by the criminal justice system and international authorities” but nevertheless went to lengths to hide it.
“It was only after several police raids that they turned it in,” he said.
With the defendants under house arrest on Monday, their lawyer, Carlos Murias, filed a petition with a civil court in Mar del Plata asking that Kadgien be allowed to auction the painting.
The court rejected the request, arguing that it lacked jurisdiction given the painting’s provenance.
Prosecutor Martínez told reporters on Thursday that his office was informed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that Marei von Saher, the heir to art dealer Goudstikker, lodged a legal claim to “Portrait of a Lady” at the bureau’s New York office.
The FBI declined to comment.