Caterina van Hemessen (1528–after 1565) defied tremendous odds by becoming a professional painter in the sixteenth century. In a Self Portrait now at the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel (1548, fig. 3.1) she displays her skills, appearing seated before an easel holding a small, framed oak panel. Her left hand holds a wooden palette dotted with oil paint, a collection of delicate brushes, and her maulstick, while the right gently holds a paintbrush to the work in progress. The text in the upper left of the panel reads: EGO CATERINA DE / HEMESSEN ME / PINXI / 1548. With this work, Caterina further challenged convention by creating both the earliest known self portrait by a woman artist and the first self portrait at an easel in northern Europe. Caterina also appears to have received an exceptional humanist education, as is suggested by the Latin signature on the Self Portrait. In a further extraordinary achievement, the artist later served as a lady-in-waiting to Mary of Hungary (1505–1558), the Governor of the Netherlands and the head of one of the most cultured and sophisticated courts in mid-sixteenth century Europe, whom she accompanied from Brussels to Spain in 1556.

With these distinctions, it is hardly surprising that Caterina van Hemessen is present in nearly every discussion of Early Modern women artists. But, given the paucity of other documentation about her life, accompanying discussion is generally scant. No known paintings signed by or attributed to Caterina post-date 1552. Archival sources indicate that Caterina married Kerstiaen de Moryn, an organist for the Antwerp Cathedral, in 1554, and that they both accompanied Mary's court to Spain in 1556.