Does mysterious painting prove blue denim was around 200 years before Levi’s?

Woman Begging With Two Children, by an unknown artist, shows what appears to be a denim skirt in 17th-century ItalyThe origin of the world’s most enduringly popular fabric is in ­dispute, as a new exhibition spotlights a claim that firmly links denim with 17th-­century Italy and takes its history back 200 years.Blue denim, that all-American ­symbol of informality and a life lived on the open range, is already also contentiously attributed to ­southern France, while mod