MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

An Argentine court returns an 18th-century work to the heirs of a Jewish art dealer

An Argentine federal court on Friday ordered the return of the painting Portrait of a Lady to the family of Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, almost 90 years after the Nazi regime looted his collection in Amsterdam. The work surfaced last year at a house in Mar del Plata, 400 kilometres from Buenos Aires.

The ruling was issued at a hearing chaired by federal judge Santiago Inchausti, attended by prosecutors, the heir's lawyers and the defendants. Patricia Kadgien and her husband, Juan Carlos Cortegoso, had been accused of possessing and concealing a work of art stolen in the context of a genocide. After initially arguing they were the legitimate owners by inheritance, they accepted an agreement with prosecutors to avoid trial and irrevocably renounced any right over the painting. The deal includes a donation of 4.8 million pesos, around 3,200 dollars, to the support association of a maternal and child hospital. Prosecutor Carlos Martínez said the outcome amounts to “a reparation of a historic character for the victims”.

Patricia Kadgien is the daughter of Friedrich Kadgien, an SS member and financial expert for the National Socialist regime from 1938, with a prominent role in currency purchases and in the plunder of occupied territories. A 1945 US report described him as “a snake of the worst kind”. He fled to Switzerland, then Brazil and finally Argentina, where he established himself as a businessman and died in 1978 without ever facing trial.

The discovery came through a property listing. In August 2025, marking eighty years since the end of the Second World War, the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad sent correspondent Peter Schouten to Mar del Plata to try to contact Kadgien's daughters. No one answered, but he noticed a for-sale sign on the front of the house. Searching for the listing on the estate agency's website, he found among the interior photographs the painting hanging in the living room. The couple were held for 72 hours until they handed the work over.

The piece is an oil on canvas measuring 119.5 by 89 centimetres. Goudstikker's records attributed it to Giuseppe Ghislandi, but analysis by Argentina's National Academy of Fine Arts confirmed it is by Giacomo Ceruti, the 18th-century Italian painter known as Il Pitocchetto. Its market value is estimated at around 250,000 euros.

The painting will be handed to Marei von Saher, the dealer's daughter-in-law, who has spent decades tracing pieces from the collection of more than 1,100 works. Through her lawyers she said she does not accept “86 years of plunder” but is not seeking revenge or compensation. Her intention is for the painting to be exhibited on loan at a museum in Buenos Aires before its return. It remains in the custody of Argentina's Supreme Court.