Jean Malouel. Jean Malouel, or Jan Maelwael in his native Dutch, was a Netherlandish artist, sometimes classified as French, who was the court painter of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy and his successor John the Fearless, working in the International Gothic style.
He was presumably born in the old Ottonian city of Nijmegen, then in the Duchy of Guelders, which was incorporated in the modern Netherlands in 1543 after the definitive victory of the Dukes of Burgundy in a serie of conflicts knows as the Guelders Wars. He probably trained there in the workshop of his father, the artist Willem Maelwael, and is recorded as an artist in 1382.
He was the uncle of the famous manuscript illuminators, the three Limbourg brothers, whom he introduced to Philip's service around 1400. Malouel also worked as an illuminator, but seems mostly to have produced larger works.
Malouel is recorded as working in Paris painting armorial decorations on cloth for Isabelle of Bavaria, Queen of France, in 1396-97, but by August 1397 he was in Dijon, the capital of the Duchy of Burgundy, where he succeeded Jean de Beaumetz to the position of court painter to Philip, with the rank of valet de chambre. He retained these positions until his death, with a salary higher than that of Beaumetz or the sculptor Claus Sluter, and lived in Dijon.
In 1405, soon after the death of Philip, he returned to Nijmegen to marry Heilwig va