When this portrait was painted, Catharina van Hemessen was twenty-three years old and a registered master of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke. In the top right corner, she inscribed in pale yellow letters: CATHARINA DE / HEMESSEN / PINGEBAT / 1551 (Catharina de Hemessen was painting this, 1551). In Latin, pingebat is the imperfect tense, indicating an action in progress, whereas pinxit is the perfect tense, denoting a completed act: she painted this, it is done.
Three years prior, on her self-portrait now housed in the Kunstmuseum Basel, her signature differed: EGO CATERINA DE HEMESSEN ME PINXI 1548 ETATIS SVAE 20 (I, Catharina van Hemessen, painted myself, 1548, at age twenty). This formula is first person, reflexive, and includes her age. A second portrait from the same year, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, omits all three elements, simply reading: Catherina de Hemessen pinxit 1548. This is third person, perfect tense, with no ‘ego’, no ‘me’, and no age. Within a single year, the assertive personal declaration of the self-portrait had evolved into the more impersonal professional formula typical of commissioned works.
By 1551, the perfect tense had become the imperfect, with pingebat replacing pinxit. The imperfect tense in artist signatures carried a specific historical resonance. In Book XXXV of his Natural History, Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) lauded the Greek painter Apelles of Kos (fl. 4th century BCE) for signing his works ‘Apelles faciebat’ — Apelles was making this — rather than the completed ‘fecit’. Pliny interpreted this habit as a gesture of modesty, implying the work remained open to criticism and revision, with the artist declining to declare it finished. The painter’s equivalent, pingebat over pinxit, drew upon this same construction. Michelangelo (1475–1564) signed the Pietà in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, MICHAEL ANGELUS BONAROTUS FLORENTINUS FACIEBAT, adapting the sculptor’s form of the same imperfect tense. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) used effingebam in his 1500 Self-Portrait, signing Albertus Durerus Noricus ipsum me proprijs sic effingebam coloribus aetatis anno XXVIII (I, Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg, was depicting myself in these my own colours, at age twenty-eight) (Boffa 2013).
It is uncertain whether van Hemessen was aware of this lineage when she transitioned from ego me pinxi to pingebat. Antwerp in the mid-sixteenth century was sufficiently steeped in humanist scholarship (Pliny’s works circulated in print editions from 1469 and were widely read in learned circles) for this resonance to have been accessible to a painter working within a cultivated workshop tradition, even if it cannot be proven that she deliberately sought it. The fact that painters of the period moved between the two forms without apparent consistency makes it difficult to infer intention from either choice. Nevertheless, for a woman operating professionally in a field with almost no precedent for her presence, the act of signing in full on every securely attributed work was, in itself, not a neutral gesture.While the sitter, despite her evident wealth, has not retained her name through the centuries, the painter’s name has endured.
References
De Clippel, K. (2004) Catharina van Hemessen (1528–na 1567). Een monografische studie [Catharina van Hemessen (1528–after 1567). A monographic study]. Brussels: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten
Droz-Emmert, M. (2004) Catharina van Hemessen. Malerin der Renaissance [Catharina van Hemessen. Painter of the Renaissance]. Basel: Schwabe Verlag
Boffa, D. (2013) ‘Sculptors’ signatures and the construction of identity in the Italian Renaissance’, in A Scarlet Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Sarah Blake McHam, pp. 35–56. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/2011416/Sculptors_Signatures_and_the_Construction_of_Identity_in_the_Italian_Renaissance (Accessed: 24 May 2026).
National Gallery, London (n.d.) Portrait of a Woman, NG 4732. Available at: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/catharina-van-hemessen-portrait-of-a-woman (Accessed: 24 May 2026).
National Gallery, London (n.d.) Portrait of a Man, NG 1042. Available at: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/catharina-van-hemessen-portrait-of-a-man (Accessed: 24 May 2026).
Pliny the Elder (c. AD 77) Naturalis Historia [Natural History], Praefatio, 26. Translated by H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library 330. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938
RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History (n.d.) Catharina van Hemessen, artist entry no. 37344. RKDartists. Available at: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/37344 (Accessed: 24 May 2026).
RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History (n.d.) Catharina van Hemessen, Self-Portrait, 1548. RKDimages, image no. 41167. Available at: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/41167 (Accessed: 24 May 2026).
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (n.d.) Catharina van Hemessen, Portrait of a Woman, 1548, SK-A-4256. Available at: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-4256 (Accessed: 24 May 2026).
Sutton, E. (ed.) (2019) Women Artists and Patrons in the Netherlands, 1500-1700. Amsterdam University Press