Argentina orders house arrest for daughter of Nazi fugitive over
plundered portrait
[September 03, 2025]
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentine prosecutors on Tuesday
announced that the daughter of a fugitive Nazi officer who stole an
18th-century Italian painting from a Jewish collector during World War
II was placed under house arrest along with her husband.
The new measures followed a series of police raids late Monday on homes
linked to Patricia Kadgien and her husband, Juan Carlos Cortegoso, in
the Argentine coastal city of Mar del Plata.
Patricia Kadgien is one of the daughters of Friedrich Kadgien, a
financial adviser to Hermann Göring, the right-hand man of Adolf Hitler
and an art aficionado who plundered famous paintings through the forced
sale of Jewish-owned galleries in the Nazi-occupied Europe. Kadgien fled
to Argentina after WWII and died in Buenos Aires in 1978.
The Baroque “Portrait of a Lady" by the Italian painter Giuseppe
Ghislandi (1655–1743) had been missing for 80 years before appearing
last month in a real estate listing, which showed the artwork hanging
above a green couch in Patricia Kadgien's living room. Experts from the
Netherlands’ Cultural Heritage Agency dated Ghislandi's portrait of
Countess Colleoni to the 18th century.
The portrait, listed as missing on international and Dutch databases of
Nazi-confiscated works, was one of more than 1,000 pieces stolen by
Göring from prominent Dutch-Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker.
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The surprise discovery of the missing painting by journalists from
the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad last month thrilled art
historians and Goudstikker’s heirs who have been seeking to recover
his stolen inventory for decades. But as news of the find shot
across the world, “Portrait of a Lady” disappeared once again.
Argentine police entered Kadgien's house last Tuesday only to find a
tapestry of a horse hanging above the green couch where the stolen
artwork had been spotted online.
Police late Monday raided the house again, along with two other
homes and an apartment in Mar del Plata linked to the Kadgien
family, in search of more clues to the painting's whereabouts, the
federal prosecutors' office said Tuesday.
They seized various prints and engravings, as well as two paintings
from the home of Kadgien’s sister, which experts assessed could date
back to the 1800s. But they did not find “Portrait of a Lady."
Carlos Martínez, the prosecutor who is in charge of the
investigation, told The Associated Press that he accused the couple
of obstructing the investigation and ordered their detention at home
for at least 72 hours pending a hearing.
Martínez said Kadgien family's defense team had offered to hand over
the painting but has not done so yet.
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