Selbstbildnis

In 1548 there was no accepted path for a woman to train as a painter in Antwerp. The guild workshops took male apprentices, and a respectable daughter did not stand at an easel in public. Catarina van Hemessen was 20 when she painted this, and she left no doubt about what she was doing. She turns from the panel, a fine brush poised against a wooden rod that steadies her hand, palette loaded with colour. Along the top she wrote, in effect, I Catarina van Hemessen painted myself, 1548, aged 20. No earlier surviving oil painting anywhere shows an artist actually at work with the tools of the trade. Her father was a painter too, which is very likely how she came to learn it at all.