Strategies of Framing in Early Islamic Visual Culture

Frames are ubiquitous in the visual culture of early Islam, appearing in architectural decoration, portable arts and manuscript illumination. In common with many aspects of the art of this formative period, the strategies employed for framing motifs and spaces draw heavily on the traditions of Late Antiquity. This reliance extends from the visual characteristics of frames to the meanings that they communicated. A Late Antique practice that finds its ways into early Islamic art is the introduction of ambiguous spatial relationships between the architectural frame and the subject supposedly contained within it. These examples also raise questions about the validity of the distinction between what is apparently inside and outside the frame itself. This article addresses the range of framing strategies utilised in the seventh to ninth centuries and questions the extent to which these frames are active in the creation of meaning. The interpretation of these frames draws on the concept of the parergon to examine in selected case studies the shifting relationships between the ostensible subject matter and the frame.