Focus on this artwork and explore the Attribution.
There has been some degree of confusion regarding Michaelina Wautier's name and the works it is attached to. Baptism records from September 2, 1604 mark the birth of a 'Maria Magdalena Watier,' In the 1659 inventory of Leopold Wilhelm's collection, The Triumph of Bacchus was attributed to a von N. Woutiers. Three other paintings, Saint Joachim, Saint Joseph, and Saint Joachim Reading a Book, were each attributed in the inventory to a Magdalena Woutiers despite the fact that Saint Joachim has the name Michelline Wovteers written on the back. This suggests that by 1659, the names Michelline/Michaelina and Magdalena were at least somewhat interchangeable. A historian by the name of F. V. Goethels argued in the nineteenth century that these--Madeline and Michelle, as he spelled them--were two separate women who must have been sisters, but careful research into the sources of these paintings show that they can only be attributed to a single person, whether she is called Magdalena or Michaelina.In 1967 Günther Heinz, a curator at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, confirmed via handwriting that this painting could not belong to anyone but Michaelina Wautier, as it had clearly been done by the same hand as the other three paintings attributed to her in the same collection.
Kunsthistorisches Museum Bacchus Saint Joseph Saint Joachim Reading a Book Michaelina Wautier