Door Leaf

At the beginning of the 12th century, in a phase preceding the one that would see the flowering of the bronze doors of Bonanno and Barisano and, later, of the unknown master of Benevento, Oderisio, marking the entry of figural sculpture into this particular genre, takes up the various motifs flowing into southern Italy and fuses them with the tradition of Byzantine bronze doors. Alien to him are the inner richness and the simplifying force of the Romanesque idiom pressing at the borders; classical examples do not invite him to solemn revivals but stimulate his decorative talent; the spacious Byzantine eurhythmy is a pretext for setting off figures of sumptuous splendour. So that, testifying to the complexity of voices that make the late Middle Ages an extraordinary age of creative excitement, this door seems to open its leaves onto the fanciful Far East, here mysteriously foreshadowed.