A painting stolen by Nazis, first spotted in an ad by an Argentine real estate agent, has disappeared again, a prosecutor said after inspecting the house.
Giuseppe Ghislandi's "Portrait of a Lady" hung above the sofa in a house near Buenos Aires.
The house was put up for sale by the daughter of a Nazi who fled Germany after World War II.
In one of the photos of the house's living room, posted with the ad, a painting was spotted, identified as an art treasure stolen by the Nazis during World War II.
However, police did not find the painting during a search of the house, but did seize the weapon, prosecutor Carlos Martinez told local media.
When the police arrived at the house, they found the furniture moved compared to the photo in the ad, and the picture was not on the wall.
Peter Schuten from the Dutch newspaper General Daily, who first reported the reappearance of the long-lost artwork, said there was evidence that "the painting was removed shortly after the media started writing about it."
"There's a big tapestry hanging there now with horses and a landscape, and the police say it looks like there was something else there before," he adds.
"Portrait of a Lady" was part of the collection of Amsterdam art dealer Jacques Goodsticker.
A large part of the collection was sold by the Nazis after his death.
Some of the works were found in Germany after World War II and exhibited in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
For more than 80 years, the whereabouts of a painting by the Italian late Baroque portraitist Giuseppe Ghislandi were unknown.
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A Dutch journalist has found wartime documents indicating that the painting was in the possession of Friedrich Kadzen, an officer in the notorious SS units and financial assistant to Hermann Goering, one of his closest associates. criminal Adolf Hitler.
Cazen fled Germany towards the end of the war, in 1945, to settle in Argentina, where he became a successful businessman.
He died in 1979.
"He appears to have significant assets, and could still be of use to us," American documents about the Nazi cited by the Dutch General Daily Newspaper.
The newspaper adds that its journalists have tried several times in recent years to speak with his two daughters in Buenos Aires, but to no avail.
It was only when one of Cajun's daughters put the house up for sale that they made any progress in finding the missing works.
Another stolen artwork - a still life by 17th-century Dutch painter Abraham Mignon - was also spotted on the social media of one of the Nazi's daughters, AD reported.
After the photo surfaced, one of the sisters told Dutch journalists that she did not know what they wanted from her, nor what picture they were "talking about."
Lawyers for Goodsticker's estate said they would do everything they could to recover the painting.
His sole surviving heir, Murray von Sacher, said her family's "goal is to return every work of art stolen from Goodsticker's collection and to restore his legacy."
Since 2006, she has become the owner of 202 works from his collection, according to the Dutch press.
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