Catharina van Hemessen, 'Portrait of a Man', possibly 1552

The Latin inscription in the top right corner names the painter: CATHARINA. FILIA /IOHANNIS DE HEMES/SEN PINGEBAT. 1552. (‘Catharina, daughter of Johannes de Hemessen was painting [this]. 1552.’). Catharina van Hemessen is the first woman artist from Flanders for whom we have a confirmed body of work. This inscription was written over a signature in the same form, though slightly smaller and spaced differently, which is visible in infrared reflectograms. The last two digits of the original date cannot be made out. It is not clear why, when or by whom the signature was replaced.

The sitter was clearly a wealthy man probably of noble birth, as the privilege of wearing a sword indicates. He wears a short, tight-fitting doublet patterned down the front in grey and slashed to reveal his whitish shirt. The brooches across the slashes are set with red jewels, as are those down his sleeves. His ruffled collar and cuffs are edged in red, and his turned-down collar is white with a red embroidered pattern. His hat has been overpainted, but there still seems to be original black beneath. His belt has gold ornaments and the pommel of his sword too is golden. He wears gold rings on his fingers – one set with a shield, quartered in red and blue – and another hangs from a chain around his neck, possibly as a pledge of affection. The black shape behind his arm is a hanging sleeve.

When the painting was bought in 1878 it was claimed that the sitter was Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, but there is no basis for this identification. The general resemblance to portraits of the emperor may rather be explained by the fact that the portrait draws on conventions of dress and portraiture popular at the Habsburg court in the south of the Netherlands. Unless the coat of arms on the ring can be deciphered there are no clues to his identity. His clothes are similar to those worn by Maximilian of Austria in a portrait dated 1550 (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) so the 1552 date might well be reliable.

The pose – one hand on the hip and the other grasping the hilt of a sword – emulates portraits painted at the Habsburg courts in the 1540s. Catharina effectively channelled the monumentality and formality of such portraiture on a small scale.