A judge in Argentina has determined that a recently rediscovered 18th-century portrait, that vanished during the darkest days of World War II after being stolen by Nazi officials, must be returned to its rightful Dutch Jewish heirs. The Argentine federal judge signed off on the return of “Portrait of a Lady." The painting is an 18th-century canvas by Italian baroque painter Giacomo Ceruti, known as Il Pitocchetto, and the judge has ordered it must be returned to the heirs of Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker.
The ruling closes the book on a decades-long saga marked by theft, a cover-up and Argentina’s dubious role in the aftermath of World War II, when the South American nation became a haven for Nazi party members and many of their ill-gotten gains.
“As far as we know, this is the first time that the Argentine justice system has recovered and restituted a painting looted by the Nazis during the Second World War,” Juan Ignacio Pascual, a lawyer representing the painting’s heirs, told the Art Newspaper’s Mercedes Ezquiaga.
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How was the Potrait of a Lady brought to light
The whereabouts of Portrait of a Lady, painted by the Italian baroque artist Giacomo Ceruti, had been unknown since the day it was stolen, in 1945. It vanished from a Jewish-owned art gallery in Amsterdam. But last summer, the eagle-eyed observers at the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad discovered the painting in a real estate listing in the seaside resort town of Mar del Plata. It had been photographed in a living room, hung above a green couch, in the home of Patricia Kadgien. She is the daughter of Friedrich Kadgien, a high-ranking Nazi official who oversaw the theft of Jewish-owned artworks in occupied countries.
“It was very surreal; we didn’t expect it,” Peter Schouten, one of the Algemeen Dagblad journalists who led the investigation, told El Pais’ Javier Lorca last August. “Photo number five [in the listing] showed a painting that has been sought in Holland for 80 years, officially listed as lost or stolen.”
