Prosecutors in Argentina today charged the daughter of a fugitive Nazi official with trying to hide an 18th-century painting from authorities following revelations that it was stolen from a Jewish art dealer during World War II.
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 Argentine judiciary eight decades after it was stolen.
The fate of the work remained 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 — had 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 1100 stolen works from his gallery remained missing.
The Argentine court had 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, had been under house arrest on suspicion of concealing the painting since police raided their home on Tuesday for the second time in as many weeks without finding Portrait of a Lady.
Kadgien, with dishevelled dirty-blonde 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 Kadgien and her husband hid the painting over several days following its sudden appearance in a real estate listing and this 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 travelling 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 recognising it as the same portrait listed as missing in international archives of Nazi-looted art, the newspaper Algemeen Dagblad published an exposé on August 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 today 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 Tuesday, 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 today 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.
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