Gniezno Doors

They are decorated with eighteen bas-relief scenes from the life of St. Adalbert (in Polish, Wojciech), whose remains had been purchased for their weight in gold and brought back to, and enshrined in, the cathedral.

Their place of manufacture has been argued to be Hildesheim (home of the famous Bernward Doors of about 1015), Bohemia, Flanders (perhaps Liege), or locally.

[4] Another possibility is that the artists and craftsmen were imported from further West for the commission, perhaps easier than transporting the single piece of the left door, either in wax or bronze form, across much of Europe.

[5] At this time the Polish church had strong links with the Archdiocese of Cologne and the home area of Mosan art, which led Western European metalwork at this date.

[6] The question has not been settled by the discovery during restoration work in 1956 of partly effaced inscriptions reading "me fecit me...us", "petrus" and "bovo luitinius/latinus", probably giving the name of the craftsman in charge of the casting.

[10] Plain doors with no figurative decoration had already been cast whole in Germany - for example for Charlemagne's early 9th century Palatine Chapel at Aachen, following Roman techniques preserved by the Byzantines.

[12] Around the central panels runs a decorative frieze of Mosan-style "rinceaux", or scrolling foliage, with small figures of astrological personifications and other subjects at intervals.

Two lives of Adalbert have survived, written around 1000, soon after his death, but no illuminated copies that throw light on the visual sources for the doors, though their texts help explain the scenes.