According to his biography by Karel van Mander, he began his artistic training with the painter Cornelius Willemsz in Haarlem, but was recalled to Heemskerk by his father to work on the family farm.

[2] His other works for Foppesz included two life size figures symbolising the Sun and the Moon on a bedstead, and a picture of Adam and Eve "rather smaller but (it is said) after living models".

An inscription, incorporated into a trompe-l'œil label on the painting begins "This picture is a remembrance from its painter, Marten Heemskerck; he has here dedicated his labours to St Luke as a proof of regard to his associates in his profession, of which that saint is patron".

[1][3] He travelled around the whole of northern and central Italy, stopping at Rome, where he had letters of introduction from van Scorel to the influential Dutch cardinal[4] William of Enckenvoirt.

It is evident of the facility with which he acquired the rapid execution of a scene-painter that he was selected to collaborate with Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Battista Franco and Francesco de' Rossi (Il Salviati) on the redecoration of the Porta San Sebastiano at Rome as a triumphal arch (5 April 1536) in honour of Charles V.[4] Giorgio Vasari, who saw the battle-pieces which Heemskerk then produced, said they were well composed and boldly executed.

The results of the art technological examination of 2024 also contradict the hypothesis, as the ink of the drawings in the Roman sketchbook has the same composition as the undoubtedly autograph sheets of larger format, some of which are signed and dated.

[1] He painted large altarpieces for his friend, the art maecenas and later Catholic martyr of the Protestant Reformation, Cornelis Muys (also known as Musius).

Adam and Eve and St. Luke painting the Likeness of the Virgin and Child in presence of a poet crowned with ivy leaves, and a parrot in a cage – an altar-piece in the gallery of Haarlem, and the Ecce Homo in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, are characteristic works of the period preceding van Heemskerck's visit to Italy.

[4] An altar-piece executed for the St. Laurence Church of Alkmaar in 1539–1543, composed of at least a dozen large panels, which including portraits of historical figures, preserved in Linköping Cathedral, Sweden since the Reformation, shows his style after his return from Italy.

[4] They show how Heemskerck studied and repeated the forms which he had seen in the works of Michelangelo and Raphael at Rome, and in the frescoes of Andrea Mantegna and Giulio Romano in Lombardy, but he never forgot his Dutch origin or the models first presented to him by Scorel and Jan Mabuse.

[4] In 1550, Heemskerck painted a large, now dismembered triptych, the remains of which are today divided between the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg (Adam and Eve/Gideon and the Fleece), and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (The Visitation).

He is known (along with his teacher Jan van Scorel) for his introduction of Italian art to the Northern Netherlands, especially for his series on the wonders of the world, that were subsequently spread as prints.