Painting Stolen by Nazis during WWII Discovered in Online Real Estate Listing

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"This is the kind of case you dream of," said Arthur Brand, the Dutch art detective often called "the Indiana Jones of the art world." "A painting stolen in WWII, thought lost for decades, suddenly pops up on a real estate website in Argentina, hanging above a sofa," Brand said. "You can't write a better script."

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An 18th-century portrait stolen by the Nazis during WWII is believed to have resurfaced in the most unexpected place: hanging above a sofa in a coastal Argentinian home and discovered not by law enforcement or a museum, but spotted in a photo on a real estate website.

The painting, "Portrait of a Lady" by Italian baroque artist Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi, belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a prominent Dutch-Jewish art dealer whose collection of more than 1,100 works was seized after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. Senior Nazi officials, including Hermann Göring, acquired hundreds of pieces, according to the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE).

The potential discovery is the result of years of work by Dutch daily newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (AD) investigative journalists Cyril Rosman, Paul Post and Peter Schouten, who have been pursuing the case for nearly a decade.

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Rosman said the team began tracing Friedrich Kadgien, Göring's financial adviser and close confidant, several years ago.

"Kadgien escaped to South America at the end of the war," Rosman told ABC News. "We knew from archival documents that he brought diamonds, jewelry, and two stolen paintings with him. We've spent years trying to piece together his life here and where those paintings ended up."

Kadgien died in Buenos Aires in 1978. His two daughters inherited properties in Mar del Plata, where the investigation eventually led the AD journalists.

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After years of dead ends, the AD team resolved to make one final attempt. They sent Peter Schouten, AD's correspondent in Argentina, to visit the property.

"I rang the bell. Nobody answered but we saw movement inside," Schouten recalled. "Then we noticed a 'For Sale' sign in the garden."

Back at his hotel, Schouten looked up the property listing ..... 'Look, isn't that the painting?'" Schouten said. "I told him, 'No, that can't be true. The Dutch government has been looking for this painting for 80 years … it can't just be hanging above a sofa in Mar del Plata.' But there it was."

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