Portrait of a Woman

Maarten van Heemskerck's Portrait of a Woman complements his male portrait in demonstrating his skill in female portraiture, a genre that required different conventions from the male three-quarter format. Northern Netherlandish female portraiture of this period typically showed women in three-quarter or half-length format with careful attention to the elaborate headdresses and jewelry that marked social status. Van Heemskerck's Italian experience gave his female portraits a new spatial confidence and psychological depth that distinguished his post-Rome work from the more frontal and formal approach typical of earlier Haarlem portraiture.

The portrait follows established conventions of the period, with attention to physiognomic features and costume details that convey social identity and status.