With the recent development of local (optical and thermal) probe microscopy and the advent of nanotechnology, it seems necessary to revisit the old subject of coherence of thermal fields. We review recent results concerning the near-field coherence properties of thermal sources of light. Concerning temporal coherence, we show that thermal sources may produce quasi-monochromatic near fields. In light of this result, the possibility of performing near-field solid-state spectroscopy and of designing near-field infrared sources is discussed. The problem of radiative transfer between two thermal sources held at subwavelength distance is studied. The radiative flux may be enhanced by several orders of magnitude due to the excitation of resonant surface waves, and this may occur at particular frequencies. Finally, we study the spatial coherence of thermal sources and the substantial influence of the near field. Surface waves may induce long-range spatial correlations, on a scale much larger than the wavelength. Conversely, quasi-static contributions, as well as skin-layer currents, induce arbitary small correlations. With the recent development of local (optical and thermal) probe microscopy and the advent of nanotechnology, it seems necessary to revisit the old subject of coherence of thermal fields.