The virgin with child and grapes

This 1532 panel predates Van Heemskerck's Italian journey by less than a year, placing it at the cusp of his stylistic transformation. The Virgin with child and grapes — the grapes carrying Eucharistic symbolism as a prefiguration of the wine of the Mass — belongs to the Northern devotional panel tradition that Van Heemskerck would soon radically reimagine after his Roman exposure to Italian Renaissance form. The pre-Roman style is typically described as more linear and flat than his post-1536 works, though Van Heemskerck was already among Haarlem's most technically accomplished painters when he left for Italy. Grapes in Marian imagery carried layered meaning: the fruit of the earth, the blood of the Passion, and the sweetness of divine love. The panel would have been made for private devotional use in a Haarlem household or guild chapel.

The 1532 date places this work in Van Heemskerck's pre-Roman style, with relatively flat modelling of the figures compared to his post-Italian panels. The Virgin's drapery is handled in the Northern manner of precise, descriptive fold patterns, while the grapes in the Christ child's hand are rendered with the careful still-life attention to translucency and highlight that would remain constant throughout Van Heemskerck's career.