Portrait of Margaretha van Binchem, second wife of Aert van der Goes

Margaretha van Binchem was the second wife of Aert van der Goes, and Van Heemskerck painted her portrait as the pendant to her husband's in 1541, creating the marital pair that was the standard format for portraying civic couples in the sixteenth-century Northern Netherlands. Female pendant portraits of this period emphasised the virtues of modesty, piety, and domestic management through costume, pose, and occasional devotional attributes such as prayer books or rosaries. The dark, expensive dress with white linen collar and cap was the standard dress of respectable married women in Haarlem, and its careful rendering speaks to both the sitter's status and the painter's skill. Van Heemskerck's treatment of female portraits shows his ability to combine the Italianate idealism of his religious and mythological works with the sober, specific realism demanded by portraiture's social function.

The panel support and portrait format closely match the pendant portrait of Aert van der Goes, establishing the pair's visual unity. The white linen collar and cap are rendered with the fine-brush precision typical of Northern linen painting, each fold and pleat individually defined. The face receives Van Heemskerck's careful chiaroscuro modelling, giving the features specific individuality within the conventions of decorous female portraiture.