This monograph book offers a new interpretation of northern European art of the fifteenth century. The author, CODART member Antoni Ziemba, presents it as a conglomerate of objects: things that 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 behavior), or establish the social status of the object’s owner 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.

The Agency of Art Objects in Northern Europe 1380–1520
Antoni Ziemba
1032 pp, with 606 ill.
Berlin,  Peter Lang, 2021
ISBN: 978-3-631-84159-4