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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

Caterina van Hemessen, Dutch portraitist, painter

College

Fine Arts and Communications

Department

Art

Abstract

In 1546 Francesco da Sangallo declared, “There are [many women] in Flanders and in France and even in Italy who paint in such away that in Italy their pictures are held in high esteem.”1 One such woman was Caterina van Hemessen, a Sixteenth-Century Dutch Portraitist. Trained by her father, who was an accomplished painter himself, van Hemessen painted portraits of herself, her sister, and prominent individuals from her community. She lived a relatively long life (from 1528 to after 1587), but curiously, her last painting is dated just after her marriage to the local church organist, Christian de Morien, in 1554. Despite this early end to her painting career, van Hemessen managed to produce a relatively substantial body of work (a few paintings of which are reproduced on the following page). Her portraits rely heavily on her Flemish artistic heritage, yet they hold a quiet but dignified mark that is entirely van Hemessen’s. My research focused on the significance of Caterina van Hemessen, long overshadowed by her contemporaries, in the canon of Sixteenth-Century Dutch Portraitists.

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