Focus on Madonna and Child (Artemisia Gentileschi) and explore the Attribution.
The painting had been attributed to a series of Italian artists until 1992, when archival research uncovered an inventory record from 1637 which brought its history to light. The question of attribution was complicated by the existence of an identically sized Madonna and Child in Palazzo Pitti. The Spada painting however was judged to be "more assured" than the Pitti depiction. Scholars long believed that the Pitti painting was the work of Artemisia, given the depiction of the Madonna as more conventionally beautiful than the Spada painting, which Mary Garrard attributes to historic gender bias.
Palazzo Pitti gender bias