Caterina or Catharina van Hemessen (1528 – after 1565)

• Was a Flemish Renaissance painter.
• She was the daughter of  a painter Jan Sanders van Hemessen.
• She gained an important patron in the 1540s in the person of Maria of Austria, who served as regent of the Low Countries.
• In 1554, van Hemessen married Christian de Morien, an organist at the Antwerp Cathedral.
• In 1556, when Maria of Austria returned to Spain, Catharina and her husband moved there, at the invitation of her patron.
• Two years later, when Maria died, Catharina was given a sizeable pension for life.
• Catharina and her husband returned to Antwerp.
• She is the earliest female Flemish painter for whom there is verifiable extant work.
• She is mainly known for a series of small scale female portraits completed between the late 1540s and early 1550s and a few religious compositions.
• Van Hemessen is often given the distinction of creating the first self-portrait of an artist depicted seated at an easel.

• Female artists were extremely rare, and those that did make it through were typically trained by a close relative, in van Hemessen's case, by her father, Jan Sanders van Hemessen.

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