Maarten van Heemskerck Self-portrait in Rome, 1553
Maarten van Heemskerck (born 1498, Heemskerck, Holland-died 1574, Haarlem), one of the leading Mannerist painters in 16th-century Holland working in the Italianate manner.
He spent a period (c. 1528) in the Haarlem studio of Jan van Scorel, then lately returned from Italy. Van Heemskerck’s earliest works—“Ecce Homo” (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Ghent) and “St. Luke Painting the Portrait of the Virgin” (Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem), both dated 1532—while adhering closely to the Romanist style of Scorel, seek to outdo it by dramatic lighting and illusionistic effects of plasticity.