COENE, Jacques - b. ~1370 Brugge, d. ~1415 Brugge

Flemish painter, illustrator, and architect. He came from Bruges and is known only through written sources, the earliest of which places him in Paris in 1398, when he dictated instructions on the production of colours to Johannes Alcherius. Alcherius reproduced Coene’s instructions, with information from other French and Italian painters, in a treatise of 1411 (“De coloribus diversis modis tractatur”). In 1399, on Alcherius’s recommendation, Coene was one of the three consultants summoned to Milan to advise on the construction of the cathedral.

Scholars have tried to identify Jacques Coene with the Master of the Maréchal de Boucicaut, however, this identification is strongly debated (and rejected).

Book of Hours for the Use of Rouen

This manuscript, written in Latin and French, is illuminated with decorated initials accompanied by rich and ample borders of branches from which flowers and small leaves spring, and with forty large miniatures set in arched frames which depicts saints and martyrs or stories taken from the gospels.

The illuminations have been ascribed to the Flemish illuminator Jacques Coene, who belonged to the circle of the Boucicaut Master, whose influence is to be observed in the miniatures.

The scene on folio 85 shows the Annunciation to the Shepherds.