Caterina is the first female artist to have been known to exist because of her few small art pieces found today. Caterina is a Flemish Renaissance painter, born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1528. She started painting when she was just nine years old and in her lifetime she was extremely successful. I believe she was a strong woman in this time because she fought to be represented as a female painting in her time. She was lucky to have been taught the arts by her father; Jan Sanders Van hemmesen. To become a female artist in her time there were many difficult steps to her training. A woman painter must dissect a corpse as well as study the male nude and would have to live with an older artist for 4-5 years. Why I think she is such a creative thinker is because when she was 20 years old she painted a self-portrait of herself at an easel. This was not only the first ever known self-portrait of a woman painting at an easel but it was the first one known for either gender. Executed in oil oak this painting became extremely famous.