This course examines varieties of sculpture in Northern Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth century with particular emphasis on the Netherlands and Germany. The course questions the near-exclusive focus on painting as the quintessential artistic medium of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Sculpture was an essential medium for the expression of power relations. Tombs of the high nobility framed and controlled the communal space of churches and chapels. Towering sacrament houses offered magnificent stages for the Eucharist — the material focus of the central drama of the church. Mantelpieces in town halls asserted the complex relationship between competing groups within the city. Carved altarpieces found visual formulas for metaphysical notions of sacred space and time. And smaller works like bronze statuettes became treasured objects in Renaissance collections.