LONDON.- The first ever exhibition in the UK solely dedicated to the painter Catharina van Hemessen (1527/28 – after 1565) will open at the National Gallery in spring 2027.

Catharina van Hemessen (4 March – 30 May 2027) will aim to bring together for the first time, from international collections, most of the signed paintings of this trailblazing artist.

Flemish Renaissance artist van Hemessen is the earliest European female painter whose works can be identified without doubt because she signed them.

Known for her small-scale portraits of women completed between the late 1540s and early 1550s, van Hemessen is the earliest woman artist in the National Gallery’s collection. She is one of only four female painters mentioned by the influential art historians Vasari and Guicciardini as having worked in Antwerp in the 16th century, and the only one of them for whom an undisputable corpus of works can be established.

Dr Christine Seidel, Curator of Catharina van Hemessen, says:’Catharina van Hemessen’s significant beginnings in Antwerp, the most prolific centre of artistic production in northern Europe in the 16th century, secured her rank among the best-known women painters of the early modern period.’

Catharina van Hemessen was the daughter of Jan Sanders van Hemessen (about 1500-after 1563), a prominent Mannerist painter in Antwerp who had studied Italian art. Her father is believed to have been her teacher, and she may have collaborated in his workshop.

Catharina van Hemessen is curated by Dr Christine Seidel, Associate Curator of Renaissance Painting at the National Gallery.

Exhibition organised by the National Gallery and the Museum Snijders&Rockoxhuis, Antwerp

Van Hemessen & Father: The Antwerp Workshop of Jan and Catharina van Hemessen will open at Museum Snijders&Rockoxhuis, Antwerp from 15 October 2026 to 31 January 2027.

Catharina van Hemessen is the earliest Flemish woman artist for whom verifiable work survives. She was the daughter of Jan van Hemessen, a painter in Antwerp. In 1556 she was apparently in Spain with Mary of Hungary. Most of the signed pictures are small portraits.

Only eight portraits and very few devotional paintings signed by Catharina survive in public collections around the world, with several attributed works in public and private collections in need of further study.

Trained in the workshop of her father, the prolific Antwerp painter Jan Sanders van Hemessen, Catharina produced refined small-scale portraits and religious scenes. Her sitters’ bearings and attire conform to official portrait types popular at the Habsburg court. The small format turns them into intimate marvels that showcase the painter’s skill. The Florentine writer Ludovico Guicciardini, who had lived several years in the Netherlands, praised her as one of only four women artists from Antwerp in his description of the Low Countries (Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi, 1567). He does not fail to mention that she and her husband, a famed organist, followed Mary of Hungary to Spain, where they stayed until the queen’s death in 1558 before returning to the Netherlands.