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. Each contributor takes as a point of departure active things: objects that were collected, exchanged, held in hand, carried on a body, assembled, cared for or pawned. Through a series of case studies set in various geographic locations, this volume examines a rich variety of systems throughout Europe and beyond. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315401867, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

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.

Domestic devotion has become an increasingly important area of research in recent years, with the publication of a number of significant studies on the early modern period in particular. This Special Issue aims to build on these works and to expand their range, both geographically and chronologically. This collection focuses on lived religion and the devotional practices found in the domestic settings of late medieval and early modern Europe. More particularly, it investigates the degree to which the experience of personal or familial religious practice in the domestic realm intersected with the more public expression of faith in liturgical or communal settings. Its broad geographical range (spanning northern, southern, central and eastern Europe) includes practices related to Christianity, Judaism and Islam. This Special Issue will be of interest to historians, art historians, medievalists, early modernists, historians of religion, anthropologists and theologians, as well as those interested in the history of material religious culture. It also offers important insights into research areas such as gender studies, histories of the emotions and histories of the senses.

The present collection forges new ground in the discussion of aristocratic and royal women, their relationships with their objects, and how they, through this material record, navigated the often-disparate spaces of Byzantium, Eastern, and Western Europe from 400 to 1500.

Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy illuminates the vibrancy of spiritual beliefs and practices which profoundly shaped family life in this era. Scholarship on Catholicism has tended to focus on institutions, but the home was the site of religious instruction and reading, prayer and meditation, communal worship, multi-sensory devotions, contemplation of religious images and the performance of rituals, as well as extraordinary events such as miracles. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this volume affirms the central place of the household to spiritual life and reveals the myriad ways in which devotion met domestic needs. The seventeen essays encompass religious history, the histories of art and architecture, material culture, musicology, literary history, and social and cultural history. Contributors are Erminia Ardissino, Michele Bacci, Michael J. Brody, Giorgio Caravale, Maya Corry, Remi Chiu, Sabrina Corbellini, Stefano Dall’Aglio, Marco Faini, Iain Fenlon, Irene Galandra Cooper, Jane Garnett, Joanna Kostylo, Alessia Meneghin, Margaret A. Morse, Elisa Novi Chavarria, Gervase Rosser, Zuzanna Sarnecka, Katherine Tycz, and Valeria Viola.

Lorenzo Lotto's Portrait of Andrea Odoni is one of the most famous paintings of the Italian Renaissance. Son of an immigrant and a member of the non-noble citizen class, Odoni understood how the power of art could make a name for himself and his family in his adopted homeland. Far from emulating Venetian patricians, however, he set himself apart through the works he collected and the way he displayed them. In this book, Monika Schmitter imaginatively reconstructs Odoni's house – essentially a 'portrait' of Odoni through his surroundings and possessions. Schmitter's detailed analysis of Odoni's life and portrait reveals how sixteenth-century individuals drew on contemporary ideas about spirituality, history, and science to forge their own theories about the power of things and the agency of object. She shows how Lotto's painting served as a meta-commentary on the practice of collecting and on the ability of material things to transform the self.

Examining women's agency in the past has taken on new urgency in the current moment of resurgent patriarchy, Women's Marches, and the global #MeToo movement. The essays in this collection consider women's agency in the Renaissance and early modern period, an era that also saw both increasing patriarchal constraints and new forms of women's actions and activism. They address a capacious set of questions about how women, from their teenage years through older adulthood, asserted agency through social practices, speech acts, legal disputes, writing, viewing and exchanging images, travel, and community building. Despite family and social pressures, the actions of girls and women could shape their lives and challenge male-dominated institutions. This volume includes thirteen essays by scholars from many disciplines, which analyze people, texts, objects, and images from many different parts of Europe, as well as things and people that crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific.