PUCELLE, JEAN
(d. 1334). An artist documented as producing the seal of the confraternity of Saint-
Jacques-aux-Pèlerins in Paris between 1319 and 1324 and whose name appears in
marginal notes along with two other illumina-tors in the Belleville Breviary (B.N. lat.
10483–84), dated 1323–26. His name is also mentioned with two other illu-minators in
the Bible written by Robert de Billyng (B.N. lat. 11935), and inventory entries of the
collection of John, duke of Berry, have suggested that between 1325 and 1328 he made
the book known as the Heures de Jeanne d’Évreux (New York, The Cloisters) with
miniatures and marginalia in grisaille. The styles of the miniatures in these manuscripts,
however, are all different, and their authorship is the subject of ongoing controversy. At
best, one can speak of a “Pucelle style” that manifests a new sense of threedimensionality
in modeled figures and architectural space in manuscripts produced for the royal court in
the second quarter of the 14th century.
Robert G.Calkins
Annunciation, Hours of Jeanne
d’Évreux, by Jean Pucelle, 1325–28.
Fol. 16. Courtesy of The Cloisters
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1450