The first comprehensive museum exhibition dedicated to Catharina van Hemessen, widely regarded as Europe's most significant early female painter, will launch this October at the SnijdersRockox House in Antwerp before traveling to London's National Gallery in 2027. The exhibition, which opens in the Flemish city on October 15, 2025, and runs through January 31, 2026, will later be presented in a more focused format at the National Gallery from March 4 to May 30, 2027. This landmark show marks the first time in nearly five centuries that most of Van Hemessen's surviving works will be reunited, offering visitors an unprecedented opportunity to examine the career of an artist who fundamentally changed the history of self-portraiture. The Antwerp venue, located just a short walk from the artist's family home, provides an especially meaningful context for understanding her artistic development.
Van Hemessen's most celebrated achievement is her 1548 self-portrait, housed at the Kunstmuseum Basel, which represents the earliest known self-portrait by a female artist in the history of European art. The painting is groundbreaking not only for its female authorship but also because it is the earliest surviving oil painting of any artist—regardless of gender—shown actively working at their easel with professional tools including brushes, palette, and mahlstick. At just twenty years old, the artist boldly inscribed her work with the Latin phrase 'I Catharina van Hemessen have painted myself/1548/Her age 20,' making her the earliest known female painter to prominently sign her panel paintings. Ariane Mensger, an Old Master curator at the Kunstmuseum Basel who specializes in female artists, describes the work as a crucial art-historical document that illuminates both the self-perception of women painters and the actual practice of painting in the Renaissance era.
Born in 1527 or 1528, Catharina was the daughter of Jan Sanders van Hemessen, an established Antwerp Mannerist painter influenced by Italian Renaissance art. While no self-portraits by her father are known to exist, his guidance was presumably instrumental in her early development, as she produced her masterwork at an exceptionally young age. The SnijdersRockox House is currently conducting extensive archival research on the Van Hemessen family, revealing that artistic talent extended beyond Catharina. Her brothers Hans, Gilles, and the illegitimate Peter may have also worked as artists, while other relatives were accomplished musicians. This family context helps explain how a young woman in the 16th century could have received the training necessary to achieve professional status in a male-dominated field.
The Basel self-portrait shows Van Hemessen dressed in expensive velvet garments rather than practical working clothes, presenting herself as a confident professional rather than a laborer. Her arms are deliberately proportioned larger than her head and chest, possibly to emphasize her hands as the instruments of her creativity. The composition includes a fascinating meta-element: on the easel within the painting appears a small female head, likely representing a second self-portrait and suggesting she intended to paint a full-length figure. Two other versions of this composition exist—one at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, believed to be another autograph work, and a possible early copy at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Conservator Céline Talon hopes technical analysis and a future reunion of all three versions will finally give Van Hemessen the scholarly attention she deserves.
In 1554, Catharina married Christian de Moriem, an organist at Antwerp Cathedral, and around 1556-58 the couple relocated to Madrid, where they circulated in the court circle of Mary of Hungary. Unfortunately, no paintings from her Madrid period are known to survive, and her latest dated work remains from 1554. She died in her late thirties, possibly in childbirth, around 1565-68. Despite her short career, she achieved notable recognition during her lifetime. Lodovico Guicciardini's 1567 Description of the Low Countries praised her as one of the celebrated women in the arts, and Giorgio Vasari's 1568 edition described her as an excellent miniaturist who earned a substantial salary at the Spanish royal court.
The growing interest in Van Hemessen reflects a broader movement to reclaim the legacy of female Old Masters who have been unjustifiably neglected. Recent museum acquisitions demonstrate this trend: Stockholm's Nationalmuseum purchased Sofonisba Anguissola's Portrait of a Canon Regular in September 2025, while three institutions acquired works by Lavinia Fontana in 2025 alone. Current exhibitions include Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750 at Washington's National Museum of Women in the Arts, and a monographic show on 17th-century Brussels artist Michaelina Wautier at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, which will travel to London's Royal Academy. The Van Hemessen exhibition promises to be a centerpiece of this important reevaluation, though the Basel museum has expressed reluctance to loan its precious self-portrait to Antwerp for an extended period, potentially limiting its appearance to the London venue.
