Painting looted by Nazis in WWII is spotted in real estate listing

A painting pillaged by the Nazis from a Jewish art collector during World War II has been found 80 years later — after it was spotted in a real estate listing for the home of a high-ranking Nazi’s daughter.

“Portrait of a Lady,” by the Italian painter Giuseppe Ghislandi, was spotted in the listing hanging over a couch in the living room of a home being sold in Argentina, where the owner’s dad, Goering aide Friedrich Kadgien, had fled after the war, according to The Telegraph.

It is among the art listed on the Dutch government’s official list of works robbed by Nazis during the war — and experts are convinced the property listing shows the real thing.

“There is no reason to think of why this could be a copy,” said Annelies Kool and Perry Schrier of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) — who claim to have spotted another missing artowrk on the same woman’s social media.

The 18th-century painting is among hundreds looted from Dutch art dealer Jacques Goustikker, who helped other Jews flee mainland Europe during the war when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands.

At least 800 were stolen by Hermann Goering, who was head of the Luftwaffe and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, the Telegraph noted.

“Portrait of a Lady” eventually made its way into the family of Friedrich Kadgien, one of Goering’s top aides and financial advisors, according to Dutch newspaper AD.

The painting was then seen in the listing selling the home of Kadgien’s daughter, who claimed to be unaware of the painting when contacted by AD.

“I don’t know what information you want from me, and I don’t know what painting you’re talking about either,” she told the outlet.

RCE researchers also claim to have spotted another missing painting — by Abraham Mignon, a 17th-century Dutch painter — on the daughter’s social media.

Kadgien, a prominent Nazi official, helped fund the Nazis’ war efforts by robbing art and jewelry from Jewish collectors in Europe. He fled to Argentina at the end of the war where he died in 1979.

Before fleeing to South America, he was briefly detained in Switzerland by Allied officials, whom he convinced he was not a Nazi. The Americans described him as “a snake of the lowest kind” with “large assets” that could be of use, according to CIA documents.

Goudstikker’s surviving family members are building a case with their American attorney to have “Portrait of a Lady” returned.

“My search for the artworks owned by my father-in-law Jacques Goudstikker started at the end of the 90s and I won’t give up,” Marei von Saher, 81, told AD. “My family aims to bring back every single artwork robbed from Jacques’ collection and restore his legacy.”

Goustikker, who died on board a British-bound cargo ship in May 1940, kept a black book of all of the artworks that were stolen from him. Some 200 paintings were returned in the early 2000s following an effort led by the Dutch government.