by More than 80 years after it was looted by the Nazis of a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam, a portrait of an Italian master was discovered on the website of a real estate agent who advertises a house for sale in Argentina.
A photo shows the painting, the portrait of a lady (Contessa Colleoni) of the late baroque portraitist Giuseppe Ghislandi, also known as Fra ‘Galgario, which hangs over a sofa in the living room of the property near Buenos Aires.
The Dutch newspaper advertisement said that it had followed the work that contains in a database of Lost Art and was listed by the Dutch Ministry of Culture after the Second World War after a long investigation – and with the ignorant help of the real estate agent.
The portrait of a lady belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a leading Dutch art dealer who fled out of the Netherlands in mid -May 1940 to escape the penetrating Nazis, but died after falling into the stop of the ship, which brought him to safety and neck.
Within a few weeks, Goudstikker’s entire collection of more than 1,100 works of art, including numerous paintings that were cataloged as old masters, was bought in a forced sale and for a small fraction of his true value of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring.
After the Second World War, some works were recovered in Germany and exhibited as part of the Dutch National Collection in the Rijkmuseum, before in 202 2006 in the sole heirs of the dealer, his daughter -in -law Marei von Saer, were restored.
The portrait of a lady was not among them. AD said that it had uncovered documents of the war that indicates that the painting of two in the possession of Friedrich Kadgien, an NS official, SS officer and Senior Aide from Göring, who fled to Switzerland in 1945.
Kadgien – described by US people as “not a real Nazi”, but “a snake of the lowest way” – then left Switzerland to Brazil and then to Argentina, where he founded a company and a family and died in 1978 at the age of 71.
The newspaper said that over several years attempts had been made to talk to the two daughters of the late Nazis in Buenos Aires about their father and the missing works of art, had been consistently rejected. Finally, a reporter was sent to knock on the doors.
“There was certainly someone at home, we saw a shadow in the corridor, but nobody opened,” said journalist Peter Schoute. “By the way, the house is for sale,” he added, adding a link to the Robles Casas & Campos agency.
The advertising porter Cyril Rosman said: “When I opened the link the next morning, I started scrolling through the interior furniture photos of the property. Was there something that said more about Kadgia’s past? Then I saw it. This painting above the sofa – Photo five …”
In the newspaper, art historians said that the painting had every appearance as the lack of work by Ghislandi, one of the most important portraitists in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, whose works can be seen in several museums around the world.
Bram de Klerck from Radboud University in Nijmegen said that the composition was “identical” and the dimensions and colors seemed to match previous black and white photographs, warned that he could no longer say in a photo.
Two researchers from the Cultural Mereal Service of the Dutch government, Annelies Kool and Perry, also said AD that “it can not be able to imagine any reason” that it was a copy, and added that only an examination of the painting itself could provide confirmation.
In addition, Kool and Schrier said that they had uncovered a photo of a second missing work that is known that he belonged to Kadgia, a silent life of the Dutch artist Abraham Mignon from the 17th century, in a social media post one of his daughters.
Ad said all the attempts to speak to the sisters because the discovery of the photo failed, and reported that the newspaper said: “I don’t know what information you want from me and I do not know which painting you are talking about.”
A US lawyer of the Goudstikker estate informed the newspaper that the heirs of the dealer would make all efforts to restore work, and from Saer, 81, said that she would not give up her search for the works of art that belonged to her deceased father-in-law that began in the 1990s.
“My family aims to bring back every single work of art that was robbed of the Jacques collection and restores his heir,” said von Saer.
