The portrait in the real-estate listing

The eighteenth-century portrait belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam whose stock was taken during the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940. For decades the picture remained among the works sought from the collection. A Dutch journalistic investigation identified a likely match in the background of a photograph advertising a house for sale in Mar del Plata.

When Argentine investigators searched the house in August 2025, another picture had taken its place. The portrait was handed over to federal prosecutors on 3 September and placed in judicial custody. Experts appointed by Argentina’s National Academy of Fine Arts identified the recovered work as a painting by Giacomo Antonio Melchiorre Ceruti and linked it to the Goudstikker collection.

On 4 September 2026, a federal court ordered restitution to Goudstikker’s heir, Marei von Saher, after the people who had held the painting relinquished their claims under a court-approved agreement. The official account establishes the order and records the heir’s willingness to let the painting be shown temporarily in Argentina. It gives no date for physical delivery to the family.