Liminal phenomena: Framing Medieval Cult Images with Relics and Words

This article discusses aspects of interactions between image and frame in the context of medieval devotional images. In the later Middle Ages the mimetic strategies to convey the figure’s presence in the image were complemented by pieces of bones inserted into the frame. I argue that this practice belongs to a longer medieval tradition of frameworks, in which different kinds of references and types of materials were developed to turn the frame into a central site of meaning. As a depository for relics in the realm of the cult image, the frame intensified the presence of the image by counterposing its strategies of mimesis against the relic’s immanent material traces. This phenomenon, however, fused what otherwise would have been distinct entities of image and relic, which was regarded as a serious problem in the context of image veneration. I show that an entirely different type of frame, one that worked with the inclusion of text, addressed precisely this problem. Here the frame addressed the artificial nature of the representation with the aim of creating distance between viewer and image.