the gates at Balawat (see fig.) (895–825 B.C.) were sheathed with bronze (now in the British Museum). These doors or gates were hung in two leaves, each about 8 ft. 4 in. wide and 27 ft. high; they were encased with bronze bands or strips, 10 in. high, covered with repoussé decoration of figures, &c. The wood doors would seem to have been about 3 in. thick, but the hanging stile was over 14 in. in diameter. Other sheathings of various sizes in bronze have been found, which proves this to have been the universal method adopted to protect the wood pivots. In the Hauran in Syria, where timber is scarce, the doors were made in stone, and one measuring 5 ft. 4 in. by 2 ft. 7 in. is in the British Museum; the band on the meeting stile shows that it was one of the leaves of a double door. At Kuffeir near Bostra in Syria, Burckhardt found stone doors, 9 to 10 ft. high, being the entrance doors of the town. In Etruria many stone doors are referred to by Dennis.
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| Balawat Gates, sheath and socket. From History of Art in Chaldaea and Assyria, by permission of Chapman & Hall Ltd. |
The ancient Greek and Roman doors were either single doors (μονοθύραι, unifores), double doors (διθύραι, bifores or geminae) or folding doors (πτύχες, valvae); in the last case the leaves were hinged and folded back one over the other. At Pompeii, in the portico of Eumachia, is a painting of a door with three leaves, the two outer ones of which were presumably hung, the inner leaf folding on one or the other; hinges connecting the folding leaves of a door have been found in Pompeii. In the tomb of Theron at Agrigentum there is a single four-panel door carved in stone. In the Blundell collection is a bas-relief of a temple with double doors, each leaf with five panels. Among existing examples, the bronze doors in the church of SS. Cosmas and Damiano, in Rome, are important examples of Roman metal work of the best period; they are in two leaves, each with two panels, and are framed in bronze. Those of the Pantheon are similar in design, with narrow horizontal panels in addition, at the top, bottom and middle. Two other bronze doors of the Roman period are in the Lateran Basilica.
The doors of the church of the Nativity at Bethlehem (6th century) are covered with plates of bronze, cut out in patterns: those of Sta Sophia at Constantinople, of the 8th and 9th century, are wrought in bronze, and the west doors of the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle (9th century), of similar manufacture, were probably brought from Constantinople, as also some of those in St Mark’s, Venice.
Of the 11th and 12th centuries there are numerous examples of bronze doors, the earliest being one at Hildesheim, Germany (1015). Of others in South Italy and Sicily, the following are the finest: in Sant’ Andrea, Amalfi (1060); Salerno (1099); Canosa (1111); Troja, two doors (1119 and 1124); Ravello (1179), by Barisano of Trani, who also made doors for Trani cathedral; and in Monreale and Pisa cathedrals, by Bonano of Pisa. In all these cases the hanging stile had pivots at the top and bottom. The exact period when the hinge was substituted is not quite known, but the change apparently brought about another method of strengthening and decorating doors, viz. with wrought-iron bands of infinite varieties of design. As a rule three bands from which the ornamental work springs constitute the hinges, which have rings outside the hanging stiles fitting on to vertical tenons run into the masonry or wooden frame. There is an early example of the 12th century in Lincoln; in France the metal work of the doors of Notre Dame at Paris is perhaps the most beautiful in execution, but examples are endless throughout France and England.
Returning to Italy, the most celebrated doors are those of the Baptistery of Florence, which together with the door frames are all in bronze, the borders of the latter being perhaps the most remarkable: the modelling of the figures, birds and foliage of the south doorway, by Andrea Pisano (1330), and of the east doorway by Ghiberti (1425–1452), are of great beauty; in the north door (1402–1424) Ghiberti adopted the same scheme of design for the panelling and figure subjects in them as Andrea Pisano, but in the east door the rectangular panels are all filled with bas-reliefs, in which Scripture subjects are illustrated with innumerable figures, these being probably the gates of Paradise of which Michelangelo speaks.
The doors of the mosques in Cairo were of two kinds; those which, externally, were cased with sheets of bronze or iron, cut out in decorative patterns, and incised or inlaid, with bosses in relief; and those in wood, which were framed with interlaced designs of the square and diamond, this latter description of work being Coptic in its origin. The doors of the palace at Palermo, which were made by Saracenic workmen for the Normans, are fine examples and in good preservation. A somewhat similar decorative class of door to these latter is found in Verona, where the edges of the stiles and rails are bevelled and notched.
In the Renaissance period the Italian doors are quite simple, their architects trusting more to the doorways for effect; but in France and Germany the contrary is the case, the doors being elaborately carved, especially in the Louis XIV. and Louis XV. periods, and sometimes with architectural features such as columns and entablatures with pediment and niches, the doorway being in plain masonry. While in Italy the tendency was to give scale by increasing the number of panels, in France the contrary seems to have been the rule; and one of the great doors at Fontainebleau, which is in two leaves, is entirely carried out as if consisting of one great panel only.
The earliest Renaissance doors in France are those of the cathedral of St Sauveur at Aix (1503); in the lower panels there are figures 3 ft. high in Gothic niches, and in the upper panels a double range of niches with figures about 2 ft. high with canopies over them, all carved in cedar. The south door of Beauvais cathedral is in some respects the finest in France; the upper panels are carved in high relief with figure subjects and canopies over them. The doors of the church at Gisors (1575) are carved with figures in niches subdivided by classic pilasters superimposed. In St Maclou at Rouen are three magnificently carved doors; those by Jean Goujon have figures in niches on each side, and others in a group of great beauty in the centre. The other doors, probably about forty to fifty years later, are enriched with bas-reliefs, landscapes, figures and elaborate interlaced borders.
In England in the 17th century the door panels were raised with “bolection” or projecting mouldings, sometimes richly carved, round them; in the 18th century the mouldings worked on the stiles and rails were carved with the egg and tongue ornament. (R. P. S.)
DOORWAY (corresponding to the Gr. πύλη, Lat. porta), in architecture, the entrance to a building, apartment or enclosure. The term is more generally applied to the framing of the opening in wood, stone or metal. The representations in painting, and existing examples, show that whilst the jambs of the doorway in Egyptian architecture were vertical, the outer side had almost the same batter as the walls of the temples. In the doorways of enclosures or screen walls there was no lintel, but a small projection inwards at the top, to hold the pivot of the door. In Greece the linings of the earliest doorways at Tiryns were in wood, and in order to lessen the bearing of the lintel the dressings or jambs (antepagmenta) sloped inwards, so that the width of the doorway opening was less at the top than at the bottom. In the entrance doorway of the tomb of Agamemnon at Mycenae, 18 ft. in height, the width is about 6 in. less at the top than at the bottom. The lintel of the Greek doorway projected on either side beyond the dressings, constituting what are known as the shoulders or knees (projecturae), a characteristic feature which has been retained down to our time. The next step was to work a projecting moulding round the dressings and lintel forming the architrave. Examples with shoulders in stone exist in the Beulé doorway of the Acropolis at Athens, in the tomb of Theron, and in a temple at Agrigentum in Sicily; also in the temples of Hercules at Cora, and of Vesta at Trivoli, and with a peculiar pendant in all the Etruscan tombs. The most beautiful example of a Greek doorway is that under the north portico of the Erechtheum (420 B.C.). There is a slight diminution in the width at the top of the opening,
