This monograph book offers a new interpretation of northern European art of the fifteenth century. The author presents it as a conglomerate of objects-things which act on the recipient in a specific ¿ material and spatial ¿ way. He analyzes macro-scale objects that impose movement on the viewer, and micro-scale objects that encourage manipulation. Inspired by the anti-anthropocentric concept of ¿returning to things¿ (B. Latour, A. Gell and others), the author searches for the ¿agency of things¿ in late-medieval art objects, which evoke specific liturgical, devotional, propaganda-political behaviors, or establish the status of social owner of the object that once co-created the network of material and spiritual culture. This methodologically innovative approach is part of the latest research in early art in Western Europe and the United States.

Antoni Ziemba ¿ renowned art historian, professor of the University of Warsaw and in the years 1991¿2019 chief curator at the National Museum in Warsaw. Author of numerous books and catalogues. He works on seventeenth-century Dutch art, fifteenth-sixteenth-century Netherlandish and German art and the theory of art from the late Middle Ages to the seventeenth century.

Northern European Art of the 14
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centuries - Late Middle Ages - Agency of art - Early Netherlandish Painting - French Art of the 14
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centuries - Late Medieval German Painting - Late Medieval German Sculpture - Late Medieval Printmaking - Late Medieval Bookmaking - late medieval book illumination - medieval tapestries - Jan van Eyck - Rogier van der Weyden - Petrus Christus - Hans Memling - Dreux Jehan - Juan de Flandes - Michel Sittow - Albrecht Dürer - Albrecht Altdorfer - Claus Sluter - Claus de Werve - Niklaus Gerhaert van Leyden - Veit Stoss - Tilman Riemenschneider - Claus Berg - Bernt Notke - Gregor Erhart - Michael Erhart - late medieval piety - medieval devotion - medieval pilgrimages