“我丈夫简于1439年6月17日结束了我的生命……我当时33岁。”玛格丽特·范·艾克(Margaret van Eyck)在她的肖像画框里是这么说的。这幅彩绘铭文是为了纪念它的制造者简·凡·艾克，尽管它模糊了生活主题与绘画双重之间的区别。框架艺术是对绘画、雕塑和手稿在不同社会背景下的深入研究，本书认为框架和框架装置是文艺复兴时期图像运作的核心。在一个快速的文化变革时期，框架开始坚定了独立的“艺术品”的概念，而重新构图可以调节艺术作品的意义——这一过程一直延续到今天。本书突出了多纳泰罗、乔瓦尼·贝里尼和让·富凯等人在框架设计上的创新，展示了文艺复兴时期框架的创新特性如何对更广泛的社会政治和宗教变革做出反应。

"My husband Jan finished me on 17 June 1439. . . . My age was 33 years." So speaks Margaret van Eyck from the frame of her portrait. This painted inscription honors its maker Jan van Eyck, even as it blurs the distinction between living subject and painted double. Frame Work, an in-depth study of paintings, sculpture, and manuscript illumination in their varied social settings, argues that frames and framing devices are central to how Renaissance images operate. In a period of rapid cultural change, framing began to secure the very notion of an independent "artwork," and reframings could regulate the meaning attached to works of art-a process that continues in the present day. Highlighting innovations in framing introduced by figures such as Donatello, Giovanni Bellini, and Jean Fouquet, this original book shows how the inventive character of Renaissance frames responds to broader sociopolitical and religious change. The frame emerges as a site of beauty, display, and persuasion, and as a mechanism of control.