This volume explores the late medieval and early modern periods from the perspective of objects. While the agency of things has been studied in anthropology and archaeology, it is an innovative approach for art historical investigations.

Grazyna Jurkowlaniec (PhD 2000, habilitation 2009) is assistant Professor at the Institute of Art History at the University of Warsaw. She specializes in art and artistic patronage between the thirteenth and sixteenth century in Europe. She has published in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, Konsthistorisk tidskrift and Artibus et Historiae.

Ika Matyjaszkiewicz (PhD candidate at the University of Warsaw) conducts a project for the Polish National Science Centre Painted Representations of the Volto Santo in the Light of Spatial Studies. Her research focuses on the relationship between the beholder and the work of art. Her publications concern medieval, modern and contemporary art.

Zuzanna Sarnecka (BA Cantab., MA Cantab. and London, PhD) is a lecturer in Art History at the University of Warsaw. Her doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge focused on the devotional and artistic significance of glazed terracotta sculpture in the Marche. She has published in Artibus et Historiae and Arte Medievale.

Introduction

Section 1

Material Agency

Professor Andrew Morrall (The Bard Graduate Centre, New York)

The Power of Nature and the Agency of Art. The Unicorn Cup of Jan Vermeyen

Dr Barbara Baert, Dr Hannah Iterbeke and Dr Lieve Watteeuw (KU Leuven)

Late Medieval Enclosed Gardens of the Low Countries. Mixed Media, Remnant Art,

Récyclage and Gender in the Low Countries (16th c. onwards)

Section 2

The Power of Things

Rosa M. Rodríguez Porto (University of York)

Knighted by the Apostle Himself: Political Fabrication and Chivalric Artifact in Compostela,1332

Dr Robert Maniura (Birkbeck, University of London)

Agency and Miraculous Images

Dr Peter Dent (University of Bristol)

Agency, Beauty and the Late Medieval Sculptural Encounter

Section 3

Objects as Social Agents

Dr Leah Clark (The Open University)

Dispersal, Exchange and the Culture of Things in Fifteenth-century Italy

Dr Alexander Lee (University of Warwick)

Michelangelo, Tommaso de' Cavalieri and the Agency of the Gift-Drawing

Dr Jaya Remond (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin)

Distributing Dürer in the Netherlands: Gifts, Prints, and the Mediation of Fame in the Early

Sixteenth Century

Section 4

Agency of Physical Manipulations

Professor Wim François (KU Leuven)

The Early Modern Bible between Material Book and Immaterial Word

Dr Karen Eileen Overbey (Tufts University) and Dr Jennifer Borland (Oklahoma State University)

Diagnostic Performance and Diagrammatic Manipulation in the Physician's Folding Almanacs

Dr Jack Hartnell (Columbia University)

Surgical Saws and Cutting Edge Agency

Professor Jacqueline E. Jung (Yale University)

The Boots of Saint Hedwig: Thoughts on the Limits of the Agency of Things