10 things you need to know about Catharina van Hemessen

Catharina van Hemessen is the first known South-Netherlandish female painter whose work is dated and signed. This small portrait is probably one of her earliest works.

Catharina painted this young woman against a green background. The sitter, shown playing with the ring on her right hand, bears some resemblance to Catharina herself, but we have not been able to establish her identity with certainty.

Catharina frequently signed and dated her work. In this case she used the Latin ‘Catherina. de Hemessen. Pinxit. 1548’, which means ‘Catherina painted it in 1548’.

Self-portraits were relatively rare in the 16th century, especially self-portraits by women! Nonetheless, Catharina painted one. She is shown working at an artist’s easel. This work now hangs in Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland.

Catharina was born in Antwerp in 1528, when the city was the most important trading hub in Northwest Europe. The trade in art was also flourishing, and hundreds of artists found work there.

Catharina was probably trained in painting by her father, the famous artist Jan Sanders van Hemessen. He had an extensive network, so he was able to introduce Catharina into the key artistic circles of their time.

Catharina’s father Jan was an innovative artist whose work included history and genre paintings as well as portraits. He was also an important figure in the painters’ guild of Antwerp. This probably enabled Catharina to claim more freedom as an artist.

Catharina's mother Barbara was the daughter of a well-to-do cloth merchant in Antwerp. The fact that she and her husband Jan came from wealthy backgrounds probably means Catharina and her sister Christina had carefree childhoods.

Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands, was a great art lover. In 1556 she invited Catharina and her husband Kerstiaen de Morijn to work at the Habsburg court in Spain.

Two important Italian writers mentioned Catharina in their work: Lodovico Guicciardini in 1567 and Giorgio Vasari in 1568. They spread her name and fame far beyond the Low Countries.