An Italian Old Master portrait stolen from a Jewish art dealer 85 years ago briefly surfaced in a luxury Argentine real estate ad — only to vanish almost as soon as reporters spotted it. Now Interpol and Argentine police are scrambling to stop it from slipping back into the shadows of Nazi loot.

The painting, an 18th-century Portrait of a Lady by Giuseppe Ghislandi, once belonged to renowned Dutch Jewish dealer Jacques Goudstikker, whose entire collection was seized by Nazis in a forced sale in 1940. Goudstikker himself died while fleeing the German invasion, leaving behind a “black book” inventory of nearly 1,000 plundered works.

Some 200 were restituted to his heir Marei von Saher in 2006. But this particular portrait — depicting Contessa Colleoni in a green silk gown — was never recovered.

Dutch reporters Cyril Rosman and Peter Schouten had been chasing leads for years, following the trail of Nazi official Friedrich Kadgien, a close adviser to Hermann Göring who escaped to Argentina after the war. When Kadgien’s daughter listed the family’s seaside home in Mar del Plata, an eagle-eyed journalist spotted something extraordinary in the background of a glossy property photo: a painting above a green sofa that looked exactly like the missing Ghislandi.

Then the listing vanished from the realtor’s website.

Kadgien had fled Germany with diamonds and at least two paintings, according to wartime diaries. He died in Buenos Aires in 1978, and his two daughters have lived there since. One has been linked to other suspicious artworks, including a still-life by Abraham Mignon that appeared in her social media posts.

When journalists reached out, the daughter brushed them off. “I don’t know what painting you’re talking about,” she replied — before going silent, pulling the ad, and even changing her name on Instagram.

With the lead threatening to evaporate, Interpol and Argentine federal police have joined forces with Dutch officials to track the portrait down before it disappears into another private vault.

The case has electrified the sluggish world of Nazi art restitution, normally bogged down in court battles and paperwork.

For Goudstikker’s heir, 81-year-old Marei von Saher, the sudden glimpse of the portrait is bittersweet. “It is my family’s goal to recover every artwork stolen from the Goudstikker collection,” she told reporters.

Experts estimate 600,000 Nazi-looted artworks remain missing. Some hang in museums, others circulate quietly in private hands, surfacing only by accident — as with the Cornelius Gurlitt hoard uncovered in Munich in 2013.

Deidre Berger of the Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project says many more could emerge “if governments worldwide would digitize and transcribe their archives.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)