Published On 4 Sep 20254 Sep 2025Authorities in Argentina have opened a criminal investigation into the daughter of a former Nazi official and her spouse after an 18th-century painting stolen from a late Jewish art dealer was recovered from one of their properties.Prosecutors announced the probe on Thursday, which will focus on Juan Carlos Cortegoso and his wife Patricia Kadgien, whose father was the fugitive Nazi officer Friedrich Kadgien.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listThe elder Kadgien died in the late 1970s. He spent the final decades of his life in Argentina, having fled Germany at the end of World War II.He is believed to have brought with him priceless artworks looted from the collections of Jewish families and businesses, including that of the Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker.Goudstikker had amassed a collection of nearly 1,400 pieces, according to the meticulous records he kept.But that made his collection a target for Nazi officials like Hermann Goring, who sought to seize the artwork for himself. The elder Kadgien was Goring’s financial adviser.It is unclear how Kadgien came to own Portrait of a Lady by Giuseppe Ghislandi, an Italian portraitist prolific during the Baroque and Rococo periods.The painting, a large portrait of the Contessa Colleoni holding gloves and a book, had not been seen in decades. As far as researchers knew, only black-and-white photographs of the artwork survived.Goudstikker had been forced to sell many of his artworks to Nazi officials as the Holocaust unfolded in Europe.In May 1940, the art dealer would ultimately die from a …
