Wheel chandelier

Wheel chandeliers were made for the practical purpose of lighting the great churches and other public areas, but in religion they also had symbolic significance, depicting the Garden of Eden or the Kingdom of God.

The wheel, its gates, and its towers, which are usually decorated with Prophets and Apostles or inscribed with their names, symbolise the city walls of the New Jerusalem.

The wheel chandeliers of the Gothic period in Germany are smaller in size than the Romanesque ones, and they are no longer representations of Jerusalem.

[3] The chandelier made of brass in Münster Cathedral has a circular pierced rim decorated with a few statuettes on its side, and ornamented with tracery-work like filigree and pinnacles.

[3] In the Minster Church of St. Alexander in Einbeck there is a later gothic wheel chandelier of painted brass with a diameter of c. 3.5 metres.