Marcellus Coffermans was a Flemish painter active in Antwerp between 1549 and 1580. According to available documents, he became a master of the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp in 1549. His dated works, ranging from 1561 to 1575, reveal a complex artistic personality:  essentially influenced by the art of his predecessors, Coffermans stands out as a somewhat archaic painter in the second half of the 16th century. Favouring models, compositions and typologies derived from the world of the Flemish Primitives, such as Gerard David, van der Goes, and van der Weyden, he also drew on the graphic work of Schongauer. Considered for a long time by art historians as an unimaginative painter, his work is beginning to be rediscovered through the works of Marc Rudolf de Vrij and Marie Grappasonni. Eclectic and modern influences are clearly apparent in his paintings, both in the attention he pays to landscape, architecture, and the realistic appearance of his figures, and in the simplified style of his works. It would seem that his paintings were exported to Spain, where there were many lovers of mediaeval painting, such as Philipp II. Bearing witness to the continuing taste for an older style both among artists and among those who commissioned works of art in the 16th century, Coffermans' interpretative copies raise fascinating questions concerning the Flemish art market and its export to the Iberian Peninsula.