Hemessen, Caterina van (b Antwerp, 1528; d ?Antwerp, after 1587).

Daughter of (1) Jan Sanders van Hemessen. Both Vasari and Guicciardini mention her, along with the illuminators Levina Teerlinc, Susanna Horenbout and others, as a prominent Netherlandish woman painter. According to van Beverwyck, she studied painting under her father. She acknowledged filial respect by signing an aristocratic Portrait of a Man (London, N.G.): Catharina filia Ioannes de Hemessen Pingebat 1552. The suggestion that Catharina painted background scenes for some of her father’s pictures (Bergmans) is unacceptable on both stylistic and chronological grounds.