Judith Utz published her chapter “Travelling Doors. Medieval Bronze Doors in the Mediterranean” in the monograph “Travelling Matters across the Mediterranean“, ed. by Beatrice Falcucci, Emanuele Giusti, and Davide Trentacoste (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024), 73–101.
The publication is Open Access; you can start reading the introduction here:
Medieval Byzantine bronze doors in Italy (second half of the eleventh century) have, up to now, been broadly studied from the angle of their iconography and historical context. Much less attention has been paid to the transcultural dimensions of the phenomenon — in part because it is hard, presumably, to imagine such heavy objects travelling.
Yet it is precisely the intended transportability that determined the form and structure of these doors. They consist of a number of panels and framing elements, as well as countless nails and rivets to fix the bronze panels onto a wooden support. Most of them were commissioned by Italian merchants with close ties to Constantinople, where the elements were cast and then shipped to Italy. As a group of objects, they are thus unique. There are no other known monumental bronzes that were made primarily for export to another region. Nor were other architectural elements — apart from spolia — exported in the same rationalized way as the Byzantine bronze doors. Most of these doors can still be found today in the Italian cathedrals where they were installed in the Middle Ages, which points to their great importance for local communities…. [Continue reading here]
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