This project brings together art historians and musicologists to develop new methods for the historical study of sensory experiences. To do this, we will focus on art and music in the Southern Low Countries (roughly present-day Belgium) between 1350 and 1700. But why do we need such a project? First it is important to note that, over the past decade, there has been much fruitful historical work on the senses, especially in the medieval and early modern periods. Yet most historians in this field privilege written sources over music, printed imagery, art and architecture. Even when they do use such material it is often approached as if it were text rather than something experienced by the senses. Musicologists and art historians are ideally placed to address this problem. We are experts at patient looking and listening, a process termed 'formal analysis' in both disciplines. Such analyses are normally anchored in specific historical knowledge about the makers and consumers of art and music. But what are the similarities and differences between how musicologists and art historians perform their historically grounded analyses? And how can we learn from one another to refine existing and develop new methods of enquiry so as to benefit the broader exploration of the history of the senses? This matters because comparing how we interpret works of art and music will offer a deeper, more nuanced understanding of how sensory experiences informed medieval and early modern European culture. The academic disciplines of history, art history and musicology developed as distinct in the nineteenth century. Yet in the period and area covered by this project such scholarly boundaries did not exist. Painting, sculpture and architecture were increasingly defined as 'fine arts' and, to bolster their prestige, were often linked to music, studied as a 'liberal art' at universities from the middle ages onwards. At the same time, music and art circulated widely: poor people earnt their keep by singing popular ditties or selling cheap woodcut imagery while prelates and princes built sumptuous interiors for grand musical performances. To explore all this, we shall focus on the Southern Low Countries between 1350 and 1700. It is, quite simply, ideal for pursuing our aims. During the period covered by this project, this region was a powerhouse of art, music, literature, manuscript illumination and printing. Moreover, these art forms were closely related. Painters like Jan van Eyck and Hugo van der Goes composed scenes of angelic music-making while the music scribe Petrus Alamire supplied elite customers across Europe with richly decorated musical manuscripts. Princely courts across Europe vied to attract composers such as Josquin des Prez, Jacob Obrecht and Orlandus Lassus. Crucially, artists, architects, print-makers, musicians and builders of musical instruments often moved in the same social circles. For instance, in Antwerp - the most populous city in northern Europe in the sixteenth century - music-printers, harpsichord builders and painters were all organized under the Guild of St Luke. At the end of the fifteenth century, this guild had merged with a literary society called 'De Violieren' with a socially diverse membership ranging from panel-makers' apprentices to urban patricians. Together they wrote poetry, plays and songs to be performed outdoors, on public stages set in important urban spaces and self-consciously addressed to the full social spectrum of the city, including children, women and immigrants from as far as Asia and Africa. In turn, these public stages were often designed and decorated with imagery and sculptures made by fellow guildsmen of 'De Violieren'. It is this wealth of visual, spatial, textual and musical sources that makes the Southern Low Countries the perfect laboratory for developing new, sensorially informed research methods applicable across history, art history and musicology.