This dissertation examines alternative aesthetics of incompleteness, focusing on how unfinished and rough objects functioned north of the Alps during the sixteenth century. The concept of “incompleteness” refers primarily to two qualities: “unfinishedness,” visible in objects that openly display their incomplete state, and “roughness,” evident in works characterized by raw, uneven surfaces and a lack of refinement. The study traces a spectrum of responses to such objects—from rejection, through acceptance and affirmation, to eventual alteration. It shows that viewers’ and artisans’ cognitive horizons were both aesthetically and intellectually wide-ranging, as they questioned the boundaries between the finished and the unfinished, the rough and the polished.