Catharina van Hemessen, Portrait of a Woman

Catharina van Hemessen is the earliest female Flemish painter for whom verifiable work survives – we can see her name here in a Latin inscription in the top right corner: CATHARINA DE/HEMESSEN PINGEBAT/1551 (‘Catharine de Hemessen was painting [this] 1551’).

We don't know who the sitter was, but she was evidently wealthy. Her shirt, visible at her neck and wrists, is ornamented with black embroidery, and the bodice of her dress is corded and watered silk. Her sleeves seem to be red velvet, her skirt made of damask. She holds whitish gloves, presumably leather, decorated with black embroidery and golden ornaments. Her belt is made of gold and black beads, and black cylinders with gold ends. A small dog with what seem to be bells on its collar is perched rather insecurely under her arm. Portraits of women with pet animals were quite common in the sixteenth century; another example is A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling (Anne Lovell?).

The portrait is in good condition. The panel is one board of oak which has been slightly trimmed on the right and at the bottom, but very little has been lost. The ground is chalk; over that is a thin, pale salmon-pink priming of lead white pigment mixed with some red lead. No underdrawing can be seen in infrared reflectograms.

Catharina seems not to have worked out the reserves (areas left temporarily blank and later filled in with objects or figures) very carefully. The dog’s head has a reserve but its body and legs are painted on top of the woman’s sleeve, while the cuff of her right sleeve is painted over a large reserve. The bluish whites of the woman’s eyes are painted over a pink basic flesh colour. The reds in the flesh are mostly red lake; some areas of vermilion may be old retouching but some are clearly original, like the sitter’s lower lip and the dog’s ear.

Catharina seems to have specialised in small-scale portraits of women like this: eight survive in collections around the world. The style and technique of this picture are very close to another signed painting of hers, Portrait of a Man.