Drawing on the papers presented at a recent conference entitled ‘Medieval art history after the interdisciplinary turn’ (Notre Dame University, March 2014), and a number of recent publications by leading names on the field (Bynum, Hahn, Kessler), I will ask to what degree the current ‘material turn’ of medievalist art history includes considerations of material findings in the sense of the ADB project, or if, rather, ‘materiality’ as it is currently being explored is in fact more about transcendence than manifest physicality.