Argentina orders house arrest for daughter of Nazi adviser over disputed wartime portrait
*Prosecutors say Patricia Kadgien and her husband obstructed the investigation into a painting missing since 1945, though its location remains unknown.*
Argentine prosecutors have placed Patricia Kadgien, the daughter of a Nazi financial adviser, and her husband under house arrest while they investigate the disappearance of a painting that resurfaced in a real estate listing before vanishing again. The case centers on Giuseppe Ghislandi’s 18th-century work *Portrait of a Lady*, a piece that had been missing for 80 years after being looted during World War II.
According to AP, the painting appeared in a listing for a Mar del Plata property, shown hanging above a green couch in Kadgien’s living room. The discovery set off a transatlantic search because the work is one of more than 1,000 pieces stolen from Dutch-Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker by Hermann Göring’s circle during the Nazi era. Ghislandi’s portrait was identified by experts from the Netherlands’ Cultural Heritage Agency, which dated it to the 18th century.
After the image circulated, police searched the home where it had been seen online. They found a tapestry of a horse where the painting had been photographed. Late Monday, police raided several homes linked to the Kadgien family and seized prints, engravings and two other paintings that experts said could date to the 1800s. They did not recover *Portrait of a Lady*.
Prosecutor Carlos Martínez said he accused Kadgien and Juan Carlos Cortegoso of obstructing the investigation and ordered their detention at home for at least 72 hours pending a hearing. He said the defense team had offered to hand over the painting but had not yet done so. The detention order came after a series of raids and underlined how quickly a long-lost artwork can become the center of a criminal inquiry once it is seen in the open.
The AP account placed the case in a larger historical frame. Patricia Kadgien is one of the daughters of Friedrich Kadgien, a financial adviser to Hermann Göring who fled to Argentina after World War II and died in Buenos Aires in 1978. The portrait’s sudden appearance online thrilled art historians and heirs of Goudstikker, who have pursued restitution for decades. But by the time police stepped in, the painting had disappeared again.
The investigation now turns on whether the family can account for the artwork’s whereabouts and whether more Nazi-looted pieces may be hidden in private collections in Argentina. For the moment, authorities say they have a trail of supporting objects, but not the painting itself.
