The bombing of Benevento in 1943 completely destroyed the Cathedral, and even the medieval bronze door was reduced to fragments. The 1990 restoration, after extensive reconstruction work, allowed the bronze panels to be reassembled and restored, thus reconstructing the cathedral.
[Photos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

The restoration also revealed that a panel on the door containing the effigy of the bishop of Lesina was hiding, beneath an abrasion, the name Errico, referring to the archbishop of Benevento who reigned from 1157 to 1170; and therefore the other panel, which was believed to represent the presumed archbishop of Benevento in his chair, actually represents the Pope. This discovery led to the door (or at least a large part of it) being dated to 1156. [Photo 8]

The door is composed of 72 panels and is of remarkable dimensions, 4.60 meters high and 3.23 meters wide, making it the largest of its kind in Europe. Both doors are divided into horizontal registers, each containing eight rectangular panels of the same size, 27.5 x 40 cm.
The panels are attached to a sturdy wooden frame by frames decorated with ovoli that surround them and hold them in place, secured by nails with flower-shaped protomes.
Both doors have two ring-supporting protomes, one of a griffin and one of a lion. [Photos 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]

The panels, cast using the lost-wax process, are in bas-relief, some with many highly high-relief sections partially detached from the background. Groups of figures appear to derive from the religious theater of the 11th-12th century.
Their style, although still Romanesque, is distinctive: the details of some figures are very accurate, the movements, poses, and compositions with their backgrounds and architecture are “modern” compared to the Romanesque style.
The first five rows of the upper part of the door feature themes drawn from the canonical Gospels, the Apocryphal Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles. There are no Old Testament themes, nor representations of prophets, apostles, or saints. In the other four rows below, there are only three panels inspired by the Gospels. The remaining ones depict the Pope in his chair consecrating a bishop. Next comes Archbishop Errico of Benevento, his 23 suffragans, and four protomes with ring holders bearing lion and griffin heads.
[Photos 19, 20, 21, 22]

Rudolph the Glaber, a Cluniac monk, wrote around 1020 in his “Chronicles of the Year One Thousand” (Historiarum libri quinque):

“It was already almost the third year after the year 1000 when throughout the world, but especially in Italy and Gaul, a renewal of basilica churches took place: although many were well-maintained and had no need of it, nevertheless every Christian people vied with one another to have a more beautiful one. It seemed as if the earth itself, as if shaking off and freeing itself from old age, was being entirely clothed in a white mantle of churches. At that time, the faithful replaced with better buildings almost all the churches of the episcopal sees, all the monasteries dedicated to the various saints, and even the smallest country oratories.”

The style, which originated in the West, in which these churches were built was what the French archaeologist Charles de Gerville defined in 1818 as “Romanesque” (Romàn), characterized by the thick walls, the use of arches, and the dim interiors due to the small windows. Even the creation of the bronze doors, compared to Byzantine ones, followed a different decorative technique, no longer graphic but sculptural.

One of the first Romanesque examples of a bronze door with sculptures is the one (still in Ottonian style) of the Cathedral of Hildesheim in Germany, commissioned by Bishop Bernald (Bernwardstur) and executed around 1015, the year in which the two medieval lion heads holding the rings that act as handles were cast, as can be deduced from the inscription:

AN[NO] DOM[INICE] INC[ARNATIONIS] M XV B[ERNVARDVS] EP[ISCOPVS] DIVE MEM[ORIE] HAS VALVAS FVSILES IN FACIE[M] ANGELICI TE[M]PLI OB MONIM[EN]T[VM] SVI FEC[IT] SVSPENDI
(In the year of our Lord 1015, Bishop Bernhard – God bless his memory – had these cast doors hung on the facade of the Temple of the Angels in his memory.)

The door is 4.72 m high, but the panels have different widths: the left one measures 1.25 m, the right one 1.14 m, for a total width of 2.39 m. The average thickness of 4 cm allows the bronze door to be self-supporting without the need for a wooden frame. The casting technique is the classic lost-wax method.
Each of the eight horizontal bands on both panels features figures from the Bible and the Gospels in low and high relief. The very low reliefs of the backgrounds are particularly interesting; while they fail to create any perspective or depth, they “anticipate” the Donatello schiacciato that would appear four centuries later.

The series of Byzantine doors made in Constantinople (wood covered with inlaid bronze panels, frames, and handles) continued after the first one was donated to the Cathedral of Amalfi in 1060 by the merchant Mauro di Pantaleone of Amalfi:

In 1066, Abbot Desiderius of Montecassino requested a similar door for the church of Montecassino, whose consecration in 1071 was attended by the famous Hildebrand of Soana, abbot of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, Alfano, bishop of Salerno, and Giraldo, archbishop of Siponto and St. Michael the Archangel on the Gargano Peninsula.

Giraldo’s presence at the Montecassino ceremony led to the request for a similar door for the sanctuary of San Michele al Monte Sant’Angelo, a door that was “ordered” in Constantinople in 1076 by Mauro di Pantaleone, as reported by the inscription on the door itself: HOC OPUS COMPLETUM EST IN REGIAM URBEM COSTANTINOPOLI ADIUBANTE DOMINO PANTALEONE QUI EAS FIERI IUSSIT ANNO AB INCARNATIONE DOMINI MILLESIMO SEPTUAGESIMO SEXTO. [Photos 1 to 10, bronze door of the Sanctuary of San Michele al Monte Sant’Angelo and details of the same]

Around 1070, at the request of Ildebrando di Soana and commissioned by Mauro di Pantaleone of Amalfi, the Door of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome was built in Constantinople by Theodoros and Staurachios. [Photos 11–16, bronze door of the Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome, and details of the doors]

On the Atrani door, only the four central panels feature Byzantine damascening; the others feature a sort of identical, low-relief chalice from which a cross emerges, probably cast with sand and held in place by four large studs. One of the damascened panels bears the name of the donor Pantaleone, while the other features Greek inscriptions indicating it was made in Constantinople in 1087. [Photos 17 to 21, bronze door of the Church of San Salvatore de’ Birecto in Atrani and details thereof]

The door in Salerno Cathedral has eight inlaid panels, while the remaining panels feature the same type of chalices with crosses applied as the one in Atrani Cathedral. One of the inlaid panels bears the names of the donor and his wife: Landolfo and Guisana Butrumile; the door was made in Constantinople around 1085-1090. [Photos 22-26, bronze door of Salerno Cathedral and details of the door itself]

The two doors of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, the central one in the atrium and the door of San Clemente, were made in Constantinople but are later than the previous ones, dating to the first half of the 12th century. Both are covered with bronze panels with typically Byzantine damascening.

The central door was commissioned and donated by the merchant Leo da Molino, procurator of the Basilica from 1112 until his death in 1146.

Both were conceived as the “Gates of Paradise,” featuring the supplication (Deesis) represented by Christ with the Virgin on his right and St. John the Baptist on his left, and the Litany of the Saints, for the remission of sins that would allow Leo da Molino and the faithful to enter Paradise. [PHOTO series VENICE, first the Maggiore and then San Clemente]

This door is part of the group of bronze doors made in Constantinople and sent to Italy, recognizable by the particular style of the damascening designs on the panels, of Byzantine type but slightly Westernized.

Just a few years after 1054, the year of the schism between the Eastern and Western churches, in 1070 the door for the Church of Saint Paul Outside the Walls was cast in Constantinople and immediately shipped to Rome.
It was donated by Pantaleone of Amalfi, “Consul Malfigenus,” as the dedicatory inscription on the door read. Pantaleone, a very wealthy merchant from the flourishing colony of Amalfi in Constantinople,
donated it to the Basilica of Saint Paul in Rome, just as he had donated it to the church of Amalfi, the Basilica of Montecassino, and the sanctuary of Monte Sant’Angelo.

The door we see, although original, is the result of the 1966 restoration, and highlights how in Byzantine bronze doors everything revolved around the design of the intaglios and not the volume of the sculptural parts. No three-dimensional sculpture was required, because the doors had to be
large panels of shiny golden yellow metal “painted” with intaglios, and never patinated; in fact, they were periodically washed to maintain their brilliance (Photos 1, 2, 3).

Evidently the schism of 1054 had not interrupted artistic and commercial exchanges between East and West, and had not affected the Roman taste for Byzantine objects; so much so that Hildebrand, the influential figure in the papal circle, requested from Pantaleone Amalfitano, consul in Constantinople, the door in clear Byzantine style.

The door (5 meters high and 3.42 meters wide) was composed, like other Byzantine doors, of 54 individual and separate inlaid brass panels, about half a centimeter thick (Photo 4); the panels were fixed to the large wooden door with brass frames nailed to the wood. It was therefore a cladding of metal panels and frames on the wood (Photos 5, 6). These panels were cast using the “stirrup” technique, which is more suitable (and easier and quicker) for obtaining thin, flat sheets than lost-wax casting.

In July 1823, the Basilica of St. Paul suffered a disastrous fire that destroyed much of the building; as many fragments of the bronze door as possible were recovered and stored in a room adjacent to the sacristy. Some of the panels lost the silver originally inserted in the grooves of the damascening (Photos 7, 8, 9, 10).

The door featured two inscriptions: one in Greek and Syriac on the frame beneath the Crucifixion of St. Peter, commemorating the founder Staurakios (“It was made by my hand, Staurakios the founder. You who read, pray also for me”), and was lost in the fire at the Basilica (but a faithful copy exists in the 19th-century corpus of drawings by Seroux d’Agincourt); the second appeared during the 1966 restoration and commemorates the artist Theodoros (“O Saints Peter and Paul, help your servant Theodoros who designed these doors”).

An ancient third inscription comes to us from the “Historia delle Stationi di Roma” of 1588 by Pompeo Ugonio (Photo 11), who had seen written on the door itself:
“Anno 1070. Ab incarnatione Domini, temporibus / Domini Alexandri sanctissimi Papae Quarti, et / Domini Ildebrandi venerabilis Monachi et / Archidiaconi, constructae sunt portae istae / in Regia Urbe Costantinopoli adiu / vante Domino Pantaleone Con / sule, qui illa fieri iussit.” which confirmed the construction of the gate in Constantinople in 1070, but this inscription too was lost in the fire of 1823.

Desiderio, descendant of a princely family from Benevento, became abbot in 1058 [Photo 1]. The Cassino monk Leone Marsicano in the “Chronica monasterii Casinensis” wrote that around 1065 the abbot Desiderio, while he was architecturally renovating the monastic complex of Montecassino (the reconstruction took 5 years) was struck by the beauty of the bronze door of the Amalfi cathedral [Photo 2,3]:

“Since his eyes were enchanted, he immediately sent the measurements of the door of the old church to Constantinople, along with the order to build the door as it is today. He had not yet decided to rebuild the church: this is why the door was so low, as it remains today.”

It is the second gate in chronological order, created in Constantinople and shipped to Montecassino. Like the one in Amalfi, it was built by nailing panels and frames to a heavy, thick wooden frame.

The door has two dedicatory inscriptions at the bottom (flanked by flat crosses similar to those of Amalfi), the left one bears the name of the donor Mauro di Amalfi and the date 1066, the year of their execution [Photos 4, 5, 6, 7, 8].

Above these, the doors are occupied by 18 panels each inscribed with the list of the monastery’s possessions [Photos 9, 10, 11, 12]. However, it should be noted that the typology of the decorations on the doors of Amalfi and Montecassino is very different: in Amalfi the four central panels are inlaid with Christ, the Virgin, St. Andrew and St. Peter, all the other panels feature flat crosses; in Montecassino the door is practically a long inscription with only four of the crosses at the bottom. It is very unlikely that Desiderio requested 36 panels all inscribed with the 180 possessions of Montecassino. The study of this list has highlighted that 26 of the 180 possessions inscribed on the door were purchased by Montecassino after 1066, most of which after the death of Desiderio (1087). But the current form of the gate and its dating are highly controversial:
the “Chronica monasterii Casinensis” reports that in 1123: “around this time Abbot Oderisio ordered the beautiful bronze door at the entrance of our church to be made.” It is very likely that the origin of the gate bearing the list of Montecassino’s possessions is due to Abbot Oderisio II, who ruled the Abbey from 1123 to 1126.

When Montecassino was bombed in 1944, the door panels had come loose, and it was discovered that eight of them had inlaid figures of saints and prophets on the back [Photos 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]: the Desiderius door, which came from Constantinople, with Byzantine inlaid panels and built just a few years after the Amalfi one, must have been dismantled and reassembled with the panels turned, on which the inscriptions with the properties of the Montecassino monastery had been engraved; the reassembly with the turned panels and the inscriptions is probably what is attributed to Oderisius II in the “Chronica monasterii Casinensis” in 1123.
The two large panels at the base of the doors, with the crosses, were added by Desiderius to make the door, which had been ordered too small, appropriate for the size of the entrance.

Of the ten bronze doors made in Constantinople and sent to Italy, only eight remain in their original locations: in the Amalfi Cathedral, in the Abbey of Montecassino, in San Paolo fuori delle Mura in Rome, in San Michele Arcangelo on Monte Sant’Angelo, in San Salvatore de Birecto in Atrani (moved to the collegiate church of Santa Maria Maddalena), in the Cathedral of Salerno, in the central door of San Marco in Venice, and in the door of San Clemente. The one from 1099, sent as a gift by Godfrey of Bouillon and placed at the entrance to the façade of Pisa Cathedral, was destroyed in the fire of 1595, and the one from the Basilica of San Martino in Montecassino (mentioned in the Abbey’s “Chronica”) was also lost.
Constantinople was the Mediterranean center of luxury goods production and trade, and was particularly renowned for its metalwork. Yet incredibly, no similar gate has survived, either in the metropolitan area or anywhere else in the empire; only the seven gates that reached Italy are known.

While Carolingian and Ottonian (or even Romanesque) gates are solidly cast, Byzantine gates are made of thin panels (about 3 millimeters thick) separated and nailed to a wooden frame. The individual panels were enclosed by modular frames (flat, as in the Amalfi Cathedral, or semi-circular or cordoned) [Photo 1] whose pieces were also nailed to the wood. Ultimately, they were wooden doors covered with thin panels and brass frames.

The Byzantine doors do not have any raised parts, with the exception of the lion heads supporting the door knocker. The aim was to create a shiny, pictorial and not plastic surface, unlike that of the medieval doors created in the West.

The first of the group was that of Amalfi Cathedral, commissioned around 1060 by the very wealthy Amalfi nobleman Pantaleone de Comite Maurone, who had settled in the Constantinopolitan merchant colony founded by the Amalfi people in the 9th century. The most influential figure in the colony, he had been awarded the titles of “hypatos” and “dishypatos” (consul and consul again) by the Byzantine imperial court.

Pantaleone donated it to the cathedral of his hometown, dedicating the gate to Saint Andrew for the forgiveness of his sins and the redemption of his soul, as appears from the inscription engraved on the cross in the panel below that of Saint Andrew, along with his family lineage [Photos 2, 3]. We know that the cross in the panel below that of Saint Peter (now lost and replaced with a plain cross) bore the inscription in Latin and Greek with the name of the founder, Simeon.

It consists of twenty-four brass panels (not actually bronze, but brass, as the alloy contains a high percentage of zinc): Byzantine doors were normally cast in brass, which, thanks to its yellow color, shone with golden reflections and were therefore not patinated but rather continuously washed to keep them shiny. Of these, twenty panels have applied flat, smooth, thin crosses, probably sand-cast, each secured with four hemispherical-headed pins [Photo 4].

The four central panels [Photos 5,6] instead have inlaid copper and silver figures of Christ [Photo 7] and the Virgin at the top [Photo 8], of Saint Andrew [Photo 9] and Saint Peter [Photo 10] at the bottom, under arches supported by two columns. The inlaid engraving was done cold on the smooth sheets of the panels which had also already been sand-cast.

Six lion heads were applied to support the door knocker, the only elements in plastic relief in the entire work [Photo 11, 12].

The Door of the Temple of Romulus in the Roman Forum closed the pre-existing round monument that the emperor Maxentius in 309 AD transformed into the temple of his son Valerius Romulus, and is contemporary (Photo 1,2). It consists of two doors completely cast in bronze, 4.92 meters high and 3.16 meters wide, and was decorated with bronze studs, now lost. (Photo 3,4)

The uprights of the frame are made of two whole bronze plates (external and internal) joined with dovetail joints; the central panels are single solid plates 5 mm thick.

The door came from the Cura Iulia, the ancient seat of the Roman Senate, built by Octavian in 29 BC, which Pope Honorius transformed into a church in 630 with the name of Sant’ Adriano al Foro; it was transported by Pope Alexander VII Chigi and adapted by Borromini to place it at the entrance to the Basilica of St. John Lateran (Photo 5).

There are various drawings of the door when it was still in the church of Sant’ Adriano al Foro: by Giuiano da Sangallo from the end of the 15th century, by Antonio Labacco from 1528, by Etienne Duperac from 1575, by Aloisio Giovannoli from 1615 (Photos 6,7,8,9,10).

From the Diary of Pope Alexander VII we know that “on May 27, 1656, the doors for the new building were removed” and, the pope continues, “the door that was St. Adrian’s should be given to Father and Virgilio Spada [intermediary between the pope and Borromini] who should have it repaired by Cav. and Borromino with more bronze or at least copper”. The door therefore underwent various adjustments in size and decoration by Borromini compared to the Roman original, and for the reassembly with different sizes, a wooden core was created to which the sheets were attached (Photos 11,12,13).

Another bronze door of ancient Roman origin reused in the Basilica of St. John Lateran is the one, of which little is known, of the oratory of the Chapel called Sancta Sanctorum (Photo 14): Onofrio Panvino in “De praecipuis urbis Romae sanctioribusque basiicis, quas Septem ecclesias vulgo vocant” of 1570, tells us that the Oratory dedicated to St. Lawrence had bronze valves of admirable workmanship, and he tells us this a few years before the renovation carried out between 1586 and 1589 on the Lateran complex by Pope Sixtus V; this renovation did not alter the appearance of the oratory and therefore we can say that the door has remained as it was in ancient times.

It consists of two doors made of solid bronze plates with 3.4 cm thick uprights and 7 mm thick panels; it is 2.42 metres high and 1.15 metres wide at the bottom while it is 1.10 metres wide at the top. The bolts indicate a reuse in the medieval period probably during the works of Innocent III (1198-1216) (Photo 15,16).

Another late antique Roman door is that of the oratory of St. John the Baptist in the Lateran Baptistery, built in the early 300s AD by Constantine I (Photo 17). After the sacking by the Visigoths of Alaric in 410 and then by the Vandals of Genseric in 455, Pope Hilary donated many furnishings to the oratory between 461 and 468; this is the only remaining door and therefore dates back to those dates and is still inserted in the marble frame from the time of Pope Hilary; the two solid bronze doors measure 255 x 84 centimeters each and are divided into rectangular panels with molded profiles, without the cold-applied decorations originally present on the frames such as the studs, of which clear traces remain.

The two upper panels have a scaled panel (used in Rome since the 1st century) with raised arches, inside which there is a small silver cross in inlaid work. A dedicatory inscription in inlaid work to Pope Hilary is present on the smooth mirror of both doors. (Photos 18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25)

If the marble entrance frame to the oratory of St. John the Evangelist of the Lateran Baptistery from the time of Pope Hilary, identical to that of the oratory of St. John the Baptist, has remained original, the bronze door from 461-468 that housed it has been lost. In its place there is the medieval bronze door dated 1195 commissioned by Pope Celestine III and made by Cardinal Cencio Savelli, the future Pope Honorius III. Its authors left their signature inside the arches engraved at the bottom left of the left door: Pietro and Uberto da Piacenza, also creators of the similar door, made in 1196, today located in the cloister of the Lateran Basilica at the passage to the sacristy. On the upper mirror of the left door of this last door appears the inscription with the date and the name of Pope Celestine III. (Photos 26,27,28,29,30,31,32)

Chiseling hammers are different from common hammers, they have a different shape (Photo 1), a different weight (generally around 100 grams, handle included) with a flat and wide head (Photo 2) which is worn out by continuously hitting the iron (Photo 3), and a special balance so as to tire the hand of the chiseler as little as possible who must continuously hit the chiseling iron for entire days of work (Photo 4).

The iron is held between the thumb, index finger and middle finger, while the ring finger rests firmly on the surface to be chiseled (Photo 5,6).
For chiseling, large sculptures are fixed on wooden supports; medium-small sculptures are instead stopped by the jaws of special “chiseling vices” (the vices in the images date back to the 1930s (Photo 7,8)) which have the characteristic of discharging to the ground the continuous blows created by the beating of the iron in the chiseling; the vices have lead jaws that allow the bronze sculpture to be tightened and blocked without causing scratches or nicks.

These clamps are applied to sturdy work worms (Photos 9,10,11) that have remained the same since the early 1900s to the present day.

One of the problems that chiseling bronze involves is the noise: a continuous “den den” at high volume that lasts for many hours, with few intervals of peace (as it’s possible to hear in the two videos below where the volume of the noise has been deliberately reduced), and which forces the chiselers to use noise-cancelling headphones.
In the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry in Rifredi, opened in 1919 between the houses, 3 to 5 chiselers have continued to chisel simultaneously every day. And it was precisely this noise that was one of the reasons that pushed us to create a new foundry in the countryside of Barberino Val d’Elsa where we moved in 2000.

Nella formella della Porta del Paradiso in fase di cesello (Foto 12) le figure in alto sono state cesellate, quelle al centro sono a metà cesellatura, quelle in basso sono appena iniziate. Il cesello si esegue anche su fusioni di grandi dimensioni, come sulla testa di uno dei personaggi del ratto delle Sabine del Giambologna (Foto 13) e anche su quella del David di Michelangelo (Foto 14).

Il bordo inferiore del gonnellino del David del Verrocchio presenta un nastro con scrittura pseudo-cufica (molto di moda nel Rinascimento) eseguito a cesello (280-282). Le sottili masse dei capelli nella testa della Diana Cacciatrice del Museo Vaticano dimostrano il cesello eseguito con uno “spianatoio” (284-286).