Madonna and Child

For most of the 20th century this was the Madonna that carried Artemisia Gentileschi's name — a young mother in a plain chair, turning to nurse her child, prettier and softer than a near-identical version in the Palazzo Spada in Rome. That very softness was part of the argument: scholars assumed the sweeter picture was the woman's work. Then in 1992 an old inventory from 1637 surfaced that tied the Roman canvas to Artemisia, and opinion turned. Today the Spada Madonna is usually taken as her hand, and this Florentine one is read as the weaker of the pair, with some giving it to other painters entirely. It was made around 1610, when Artemisia was barely 17 and still working in her father Orazio's Roman studio, years before the assault and trial that would come to define how people read her.