Argentine police officers who raided a house owned by the daughter of Nazi Friedrich Kadgien to recover a stolen painting have had to leave empty-handed.

According to the AD, which discovered the painting on a local real estate site advertising the house, A Lady’s Portrait by Italian 17th-century master Giuseppe Ghislandi, no longer hung above the living room sofa.

The painting was part of the collection owned by Jewish-Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who died in an accident on board the ship that was to take him to freedom when the Germans invaded in 1940.

The Nazis confiscated many of his works of art and sold them off to high-ranking officials for much less than they were worth, including A Lady’s Portrait, dating from the 17th century.

The painting, a portrait of the Contessa Colleoni, is on the international list of lost art and the official Dutch list of artworks looted by the Nazis.

Kadgien – described by US interrogators as “not a true Nazi” but “a snake of the lowest sort” – ended up in Argentina by way of  Switzerland and Brazil, where he started a company and a family and died in 1978, aged 71.

He is thought to have taken the painting to Argentina where it remained in his family for the next 80 years.

According to Argentine media, police raided the house in the coastal town of Mar del Plata only to find the painting gone and the interior of the room changed. The house no longer features on the real estate site and the daughter has changed the name on her Instagram account, the AD reported.

The descendants of Goudstikker, who have successfully retrieved some  202 works of art back from the Dutch state in 2007, and who are also targeting private individuals, have said they will reclaim the painting.

“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 the paper. “My family aims to bring back every single artwork robbed from Jacques’ collection and restore his legacy.”

The Argentine police has said they will continue the search for the painting.