This study explores the duality of some of the major interpretive schemes that have determined the last few decades of historiography on late medieval Netherlandish culture, oscillating between bourgeois and courtly, realistic and symbolic, profane and religious, and innovative versus traditional.

Original contributions of leading scholars in their field give an insight in the current state of research on textile art in the Middle Ages and early modern times.

A major reappraisal of the art and architecture of the Cistercians in the late Middle Ages.