The Romanesque Wooden Doors of Split Cathedral - Research, Conservation and Protection 2014 - 2018

VRATNICE ANDRIJE BUVINE
U SPLITSKOJ KATEDRALI:
1214.-2014.

THE DOORS OF ANDRIJA BUVINA IN SPLIT
CATHEDRAL: 1214-2014

Z B O R N I K R A D O VA
PROCEEDINGS

KNJIŽEVNI KRUG SPLIT
INSTITUT ZA POVIJEST UMJETNOSTI

VRATNICE ANDRIJE BUVINE U SPLITSKOJ KATEDRALI: 1214-2014.
ZBORNIK RADOVA

THE DOORS OF ANDRIJA BUVINA IN SPLIT CATHEDRAL: 1214-2014
PROCEEDINGS

BIBLIOTEKA KNJIGA MEDITERANA

110

Biblioteku utemeljio Ivo Frangeš

Uredništvo
IVO BABIĆ, JOŠKO BELAMARIĆ, JOŠKO BOŽANIĆ,
NENAD CAMBI, PETAR JAKELIĆ, BRANKO JOZIĆ,
VANJA KOVAČIĆ, BRATISLAV LUČIN, EMILIO MARIN,
ŽELJKO RADIĆ, DRAGO ŠIMUNDŽA, RADOSLAV TOMIĆ,

MARKO TROGRLIĆ, JOSIP VRANDEČIĆ
Glavni urednik

NENAD CAMBI

Recenzenti
VANJA KOVAČIĆ
DINO MILINOVIĆ

VRATNICE ANDRIJE BUVINE
U SPLITSKOJ KATEDRALI:
1214.-2014.

THE DOORS OF ANDRIJA BUVINA IN SPLIT
CATHEDRAL: 1214-2014

Zbornik radova s međunarodnog znanstvenog skupa održanog u
Splitu od 23. do 24. rujna 2014.

Proceedings of the International Scholarly Conference held in
Split from 23rd to the 24th of September 2014

Uredili / Editors
JOŠKO BELAMARIĆ, GUIDO TIGLER

KNJIŽEVNI KRUG
INSTITUT ZA POVIJEST UMJETNOSTI

SPLIT – ZAGREB
2020

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CIP - Katalogizacija u publikaciji
SVEUČILIŠNA KNJIŽNICA U SPLITU

UDK 73Buvina, A.
726.6(497.583Split):73
94(497.583Split)”11/12”

MEĐUNARODNI znanstveni skup Vratnice Andrije Buvine u split-
skoj katedrali 1214.-2014. (2014 ; Split)

Vratnice Andrije Buvine u splitskoj katedrali: 1214.-2014. : zbornik
radova s međunarodnog znanstvenog skupa održanog u Splitu od 23.
do 24. rujna 2014. = The doors of Andrija Buvina in Split Cathedral:
1214-2014 : proceedings of the International Scholarly Conference
held in Split from 23rd to the 24th of September 2014 / uredili/editors
Joško Belamarić, Guido Tigler. - Split : Književni krug ; Zagreb :
Institut za povijest umjetnosti, 2020. - (Biblioteka Knjiga Mediterana ;
110)

Bibliografske bilješke uz tekst. - Kazala.

ISBN 978-953-163-497-7 (KKS). - ISBN 978-953-7875-75-6 (IPU)
1. Belamarić, Joško 2. Tigler, Guido

180909072
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4

PROSLOV

Na dan sv. Jurja 1214. godine, u vrijeme jednog od najvažnijih razdoblja svoje
povijesti, kada se Split razvijao u propulzivnu jadransku raskrsnicu, katedrala sve-
tog Dujma dobila je pozlaćene vratnice visoke 5,30 m, a široke 3,60 m, na kojima
je radio Andrija Buvina, »pictor de Spaleto« – kako je nazvan u bilješci ispisanoj
vjerojatno početkom 15. stoljeća na margini jednog od rukopisa Historia Saloni-
tana Tome Arhiđakona. Na dva krila vratnice niže se po sedam parova udubljenih
četvornih polja s prizorima iz evanđelja, života i muke Kristove, od Blagovijesti
do Uzašašća u nebo. Po svojoj očuvanosti splitske su vratnice unikum u europskoj
romaničkoj umjetnosti i jedan od najvažnijih dokumenata za povijest srednjovje-
kovne plastike uopće. Stilska heterogenost vratnica ne iznenađuje, jer aplikativna
umjetnost – a time obuhvaćamo i drvenu plastiku u razdoblju srednjeg vijeka –
lakše nego kiparstvo u kamenu kumulira oblikovne tendencije s raznih strana, iz
raznorodnih pa i raznovremenskih stilova, kao i iz različitih umjetničkih medija.

Studija Ljube Karamana o Buvininim vratnicama i drvenim korskim klupama
u istoj katedrali napisana je davne 1942., a nakon nje im je posvećeno tek neko-
liko tekstova, pa se može kazati kako je niz problema koji se nudi suvremenom
čitanju njihova stila i sadržaja ostao širom otvoren, jednako kao interpretacija
kulturno-povijesnog konteksta u kojemu se nastale.

Zbog svega toga, o 800. godišnjici njihova svečanog postavljanja na ras­
košno klesani portal nekadašnjeg Dioklecijanova mauzoleja – srednjovjekovne
katedrale, Institut za povijest umjetnosti i Književni krug Split organizirali su 23.
i 24. rujna 2014., međunarodni znanstveni simpozij na kojemu je Buvinino djelo
obrađeno u širem okviru 1200-ih godina, zlatnog doba romaničke umjetnosti na
hrvatskoj obali.

Rađanje zbornika iz više je razloga teklo dugo. Glavnom je kumovala činje-
nica što je upravo po svršetku simpozija Hrvatski restauratorski zavod započeo s
restauratorskom kampanjom koju je vodila Žana Matulić Bilač, a koja je trajala sve
do 2018. godine. Rezultirala je zamašnom izložbom »Drvene romaničke vratnice
splitske katedrale – istraživanje, restauriranje i zaštita« i još jednim znanstvenim
kolokvijem (Split, 8. V. 2018.) koju su organizirali Hrvatski restauratorski zavod i
Institut za povijest umjetnosti. Urednici ovog zbornika smatrali su stoga umjesnim
da ovdje, uz izlaganja sa simpozija iz 2014., ugrade i nekoliko važnih prinosa sa
kolokvija iz 2018. godine. Uz to su gledali sadržajnu nit zbornika što više vezati uz
same vratnice i srodne primjere u Europi, te općenito uz fenomen srednjovjekovne
polikromne drvene plastike. Naravno, članci (njih 14) za tako sastavljen zbornik
nisu pristigli istovremeno nego u rasponu od punih pet godina. Neki autori su
imali, dakle, mogućnost da nakon održavanja simpozija 2014. izbliza poprate sve
faze restauracije i otkrića proizišla iz sustavnih analiza konstrukcije vratnica, da

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doznaju odgovore na brojna pitanja vezana uz izbor i starost drva, alate, tehnike
rezanja i oblikovanja reljefa, te njihovo oslikavanje, pozlaćivanje…

Prilozi u zborniku dokaz su značajnog razvoja koji se dogodio u posljed-
njih nekoliko godina u našem razumijevanju monumentalnih vratnica splitske
katedrale. No, unatoč činjenici što su znanja o njihovim tehničkim značajkama
umnogostručena, i što su se pred nama sada našle uvjerljive virtualne rekonstruk-
cije njihova izvornog izgleda, te što prilozi ovog zbornika, sigurni smo, u znatnoj
mjeri otkrivaju nove poglede na splitske vratnice, očito je da će sve to zajedno
otvoriti čitavu mrežu novih ideja, jer se bitno promijenila složenost pitanja koja
pred njima moramo postaviti.

Joško Belamarić
Guido Tigler

6

PROLOGUE

On St George’s Day, 1214, at the time of one of the most important periods of
its history, when Split was developing into a powerhouse at the crossroads of the
Adriatic, the Cathedral of St Domnius acquired gilt doors 5.30 m high and 3.60 m
wide, on which worked Andreas Buvina, a »pictor de Spaleto«, as he is called in
a note probably written in the early 15th century in the margins of a manuscript of
Thomas the Archdeacon’s Historia Salonitana. The two leaves each contain seven
pairs of inset square panels with scenes from the Gospels, of the life and passion
of Christ, from the Annunciation to the Ascension. By its preservation Split doors
are one of a kind in European Romanesque art and one of the most important of
all documents for the history of medieval sculpture. The stylistic heterogeneity
of the doors is not surprising, for applicative art, including wooden carving in the
period of the Middle Ages, more easily than sculpting in stone, lends itself to the
accumulation of formal tendencies from all quarters, from diverse styles and from
various times, as well as from different art media.

The Ljubo Karaman study of the Cathedral’s doors and the wooden choir
stalls was written long ago in 1942; subsequently, only a few smaller essays were
devoted to them. Accordingly, the many problems available for a contemporary
reading of their style and content have been left unconsidered, just like the inter-
pretation of the cultural and historical context in which they were created.

For all these reasons, on the 8th centenary of their solemn installation in the
opulently carved portal of the former mausoleum of Diocletian, now the medieval
cathedral, the Institute of Art History and the Split Literary Circle organised an
international symposium on the 23rd and 24th of September 2014, at which Buvina’s
work was discussed in the wider context of the 1200s, the golden age of Roman-
esque art on the Croatian coast.

There were several reasons why the compiling of this collection of papers was
a lengthy process. Key among them was the fact that directly after the symposium,
the Croatian Conservation Institute launched a conservation campaign led by Žana
Matulić Bilač, which lasted until 2018. This resulted in the large-scale exhibition
»Wooden Romanesque Doors of the Split Cathedral – Research, Conservation and
Protection« and another scholarly colloquium (Split, May 8, 2018) organised by
the Croatian Conservation Institute and the Institute of Art History. The editors
of this collection therefore considered it appropriate to include some important
contributions from the 2018 colloquium alongside the papers from the 2014 sym-
posium. In addition, they aimed to connect the content of the collection with the
doors themselves and related examples from Europe as closely as possible, and
in general with the phenomenon of wooden medieval polychrome three dimen-
sional art. Of course, the papers (14 altogether) for this kind of collection did not

7

arrive simultaneously but over the course of a full five years. Some of the authors
therefore had the opportunity to closely follow all phases of the conservation and
discoveries that emerged from the systematic analysis of the construction of the
doors following the symposium held in 2014, in order to discover the answers to
numerous questions relating to the selection and age of the wood, tools, woodcarv-
ing techniques, and the design of the reliefs, and their painting, gilding…

The papers in this collection are evidence of the considerable developments
that have occurred in the past few years in our understanding of the monumental
doors of the Split cathedral. However, despite the fact that our understanding of
their technical features has multiplied, and the fact that we now have convincing
virtual reconstructions of their original appearance, and that the papers in this
collection will, we are certain, uncover to a significant extent new perspectives
on the Split doors, it is clear that all this will open an entire web of new ideas,
because the complexity of the questions that we need to pose about the doors has
altered considerably.

Joško Belamarić
Guido Tigler

8

Romaničke drvene vratnice splitske katedrale (fotomontaža Ž. Bačić) /
The Romanesque wooden doors of Split Cathedral

9

Navještenje / The Annunciation
10 Isusovo rođenje / The Nativity of Jesus

Pohod triju mudraca / Magi coming from the East

Poklonstvo mudraca / The Adoration of the Magi 11

Pokolj nevine dječice / The Slaughter of the Innocents
12 Bijeg u Egipat / The Flight to Egypt

Prikazanje u Hramu / The Presentation in the Temple

Kristovo krštenje / The Baptism of Christ 13

Svadba u Kani / The Wedding in Cana
14 Iskušenje u pustinji / Temptation in the Desert

Ozdravljenje opsjednutog iz Geraze / The Healing of the Possessed from Gerasa

Krist i Samarijanka / Christ and the Samaritan Woman 15

Ozdravljenje slijepca / The Healing the Blind Man
16 Uskrišenje Lazara / The Resurrection of Lazarus

Slanje učenika / The Mission of the Disciples

Krist plače nad Jeruzalemom / Lament over Jerusalem 17

Ulazak u Jeruzalem / The Entrance into Jerusalem
18 Posljednja večera / The Last Supper

Pranje nogu učenicima / The Washing of Disciples Feet
Agonija u Getsemanskom vrtu / The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane 19

Judin poljubac /Juda’s Kiss
20 Krist pred Pilatom / Pilat’s Judgement

Bičevanje Krista / The Flagellation

Raspeće / The Crucifiction 21

Skidanje s križa / The Removal from the Cross
22 Polaganje u grob / The Entombment

Silazak u Limb / Hell Descent

Uzašašće na nebo / The Ascension to Heaven 23

Zatvorene romaničke vratnice Andrije Buvine u portalu katedrale (Dioklecijanova
mauzoleja), fotomontaža Ž. Bačić / The closed Romanesque doors of Andrija
Buvina in the portal of the Split Cathedral (Diocletian mausoleum)

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Žana Matulić Bilač

THE ROMANESQUE WOODEN DOORS OF SPLIT CATHEDRAL
– RESEARCH, CONSERVATION AND PROTECTION 2014 – 2018

UDK: 745.51.025.3/.4(497.583Split) Žana Matulić Bilač
726.6(497.853Split) Hrvatski restauratorski zavod

Izvorni znanstveni rad Restauratorski odjel Split
Rad predan: 22. 8. 2019.

The conservation-restoration programme of the Croatian Conservation Institute and
the Ministry of Culture that from 2014 to 2018 focused on the monumental Romanesque
wooden doors of Split Cathedral developed into a multidisciplinary programme that opened
the door into the almost unknown technical world of wood sculpture and art of 13th century
Split. In addition to the design and construction process, the selection of wood, the tech-
niques and the tools for its working, the production processes, the materials and techniques
for the painting and gilding of the doors in the context of similar works of wooden sculpture
and painting of the time are also presented. The paper gives a survey of research findings
in conjunction with a virtual reconstruction of the original appearance of the doors.

Keywords: Romanesque wooden Doors; Andrija Buvina; Split; Cathedral; conserva-
tion – restoration; technical and historical research; virtual reconstruction

SOURCES, POSITION AND FUNCTION

Not a single one of the records of the thirteen historical visitations of Split Ca-
thedral still in existence (from 1578 to 1766), amazingly, mentions the monumental
carved and painted wooden coffered doors fitted into the internal frame of the great
portal of what was once Diocletian’s Mausoleum. Yet although in these sources
that cover a span of a quarter of the history of the doors they are not mentioned
as part of the cathedral’s inventory, we can find evidence concerning their history
in this place not only in the fact that the doors are in the Romanesque style and
are precisely tailored for this position, but also in the shape of marginalia in three
manuscript copies of the chronicle Historia Salonitana of Thomas the Archdea-
con, which from their palaeographic characteristics can be dated to between the
14th and the 17th century. They were mentioned, according to sources of the time,
by Daniele Farlati,1 while the first direct descriptions and pictorial depictions of

1 D. Farlati, Illyricum Sacrum, I, Venetiis, 1751, p. 491; Illyricum Sacrum, III, 1765,
p. 239: »… ad januam templi, cujus valvas ex antiquo ligno mira soliditate ad tineam &

119

the doors are to be found no sooner than the 19th century. The twentieth century
begins with synoptic accounts of the sources. Frane Bulić brought together in one
place the writings in Thomas’ chronicles,2 while Ljubo Karaman wrote the first
complete study about the doors and choir stalls of Split Cathedral in which all the
known accounts and mentions of them up to 1920 had been gathered together.3
From that year on, they were discussed and considered in at least 24 heterogeneous
chapters, smaller studies and catalogues. A new wave of contributions as part of
the celebration of the 8th centenary of the doors appeared unified in international
conferences in 2014 and 2018, and then in a collection of articles for their 805th
birthday, placing them in a contemporary context.

The true setting of the doors that, according to the sources listed, can be
dated to 1214 and ascribed to the master Andrija Buvina, pinctorem de Spaleto
– according to one,4 eximius ea tempestate sculptor, according to another,5 and
sculptor ea tempestate pictorque nobilissimus according to a third source6, is the
monumental portal of Diocletian’s Museum, which has an aperture of 508 x 303
cm, surrounded with an ornamental frame and a lintel that up to the renovation
of 1910 was still in existence in its historical shape.7 Designed according to the
proportions based of the »golden section«, the portal occupies almost one sixth
of the area of the external western wall of the octagonal building , and the whole
of the rear wall of the rectangular entry niche of the mausoleum, apart from the
internal side of the framework carved for its original doors (figs. 1, 2).

The entry rectangular niche of the Mausoleum is designed in all three sections
according to the portal, and in front, side and plan views is a kind of imprint of
the form and position of the original doors in this place that, open, once entirely
covered its lateral walls.

The width of the originally conceived leaves thus determined the width, which
is to say the depth, of the niche, and the thickness of the walls of the building in
this place. Their design is then directly correlated with the shape and size of the

cariem arcendam praedito, anno 1214. Andreas Buvina eximius ea tempestate sculptor,
tessellato opere cęlavit« (celavit / caelavit).

2 F. Bulić, »Osservazione sull’ anno dei battenti della Porta maggiore del Duomo di
Spalato«, BASD, XXXV (1912), pp. 72-76.

3 Lj. Karaman, Buvinove vratnice i drveni kor splitske katedrale, Rad HAZU, vol.
CCLXXV, Zagreb, 1942.

4 Toma Arhiđakon, codex from the 14th century Garagnin-Fanfogna library, the so-
called Codex Papali, kept today in the Nemzeti Museum, Budapest f. 2 (copy from the
14th to 15th century).

5 D. Farlati, o. c. (1a), p. 491.
6 D. Farlati, o. c. (1b), p. 239.
7 That year the lintel of it was replaced, as were parts of the door frame. Niemann
explains and draws the state of the portal before the renovation (G. Niemann, Der Palast
Diokletians in Spalato, Wien, 1910, p. 66). On a photograph of the detail of the portal Josef
Wlha, clearer than today, can be seen the replaced parts (Vienna, Bildarchiv, Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, no. of photograph 2922 (glass plate)).

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entry portal, but it is important to emphasise here the point of departure for the un-
derstanding of the interdependence of the architecture and the long and enigmatic
history of the doors in this place: both the Antique (of which we know nothing),
then the Romanesque with their Renaissance substitutes,8 two porch doors: the
first of the 17th and 18th century, and those of today, of 1910, and possibly those
that were perhaps put in this place in the early medieval period, concerning which
we have no information whatsoever.

Although for this reason we might with good reason be inclined to give
credence to the belief that Buvina’s doors, with which the known history of the
doors of the portal begin – replaced the earlier Antique doors in this position,
Thomas’s account, which almost all authors think refers to the southern door,
could be correlated not only with the southern but also with the main entrance
into the first cathedral (that part of a hypothesis has been advanced in one place).9

Today on the portal there is no trace of the original doors, while the vault
and the floor of the niche are not preserved in their original forms, but have been
modified so that the Romanesque doors should fit neatly within its inner frame.
On the left wall of the niche however there are grooves for security cross bars,
by indirect evidence concluded to belong to the Romanesque phase of the portal.
There are also no written sources about the original doors, and none about some
that in their original shape closed off the portal of the Temple of Jupiter (the bap-
tistery), the side entrance into the Peristyle, the entrance into the Vestibule, the
cryptoporticus and perhaps divided off the other key passages around the palace,
the doors of which, judging from the dimensions and hints of the remaining frames,

8 C14 analysis of a segment of the doors from Split Muzej Grada, which I mapped
as 80/81R, carried out by Ines Krajcar Bronić at the Ruđer Bošković Institute dated the
segment to a period between 1435 and 1683 (85.7%), with little chance of it really being
in the 18th century (1736-1805) (7.6%), which shows that at least once in history structural
operations to the doors were carried out. It is interesting and important that the screen of
the choir stalls of the cathedral were done in about 1440, also of walnut wood (Juglans
regia L.), as well as the archbishop’s throne of about 1620, and two music stands in the
choir that are from 1684 (dating by Arsen Duplančić). In the cathedral then we have a
continuity of use of walnut wood from almost 500 years. The dating of segment 80/81R
to the time of the choir screen opens up the hypothesis that they were carved by the same
craftsmen, who in the attribution of Joško Belamarić was Ivan Budislavić (J. Belamarić,
»Ivan Budislavić u koru splitske katedrale«, Studije iz starije umjetnosti na Jadranu, sv.
II, Književni Krug, Split, 2012, pp. 167-195).

9 Toma Arhiđakon, Historia Salonitana: povijest salonitanskih i splitskih prvosve­
ćenika; predgovor, latinski tekst, kritički aparat i prijevod na hrvatski jezik Olga Perić;
povijesni komentari Mirjana Matijević Sokol; studija »Toma Arhiđakon i njegovo djelo«,
Radoslav Katičić; Split, Književni krug, 2003, XI, p. 49: »Seeing the people growing in
their love of divine worship, he at once undertook a praiseworthy task: he [Archbishop
Ioannes] cleansed the Temple of Jove, a building that had been raised so as to tower above
others within the imperial palace, of the deceit of its false idols, and fitted it with doors
and locks« (R. Bužančić, »Toma Arhiđakon i njegove vijesti o Ivanu Ravenjaninu«, Toma
Arhiđakon i njegovo doba, Split, 2004, p. 273).

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were all on the same model.10 What is certain is that none of these doors were
hinged onto the side walls of the portals, while on the vaults and floors of part of
the extant portals there are traces of holes of the former fastenings via fixed rota-
ting elements. Real survivors of doors of the Antique heritage, very few of which
are made of wood, and far more of combined wood and metal, suggest to us what
their basic constructional and formal template was, and what the materials and
techniques of their making were. Apart from the simple models of functional doors
that were entirely made of wood and were of relatively simple construction and
surface articulation, and were from some extant examples decorated with wooden
knobs,11 the doors of some important portals are most often made of wood lined
with bronze sheeting hammered on with nails, which often have decorative heads,
while the metal spheres here too bordered the edges of geometrically intricated
surfaces. Apart from their aesthetic function, the knobs were also used to join their
constructional layers more strongly.12

The choice of materials, decoration and the complexity of the pattern of doors
were naturally dependent on their function, which among the Romans reflected
the importance of the door in this as it were hierarchical scale.

Important Roman portals were thus made with particular artfulness, with
gradual improvement of the production of sheeting of high quality bronze alloys
with which they still lined the wooden cores of doors, and the development of
new variations of models of tools for woodworking (plane, file, saw, drill) and
new techniques of composing, joining, inlaying and so on.

Carved wooden doors came into being with Christian art, but they most
have picked up from a long tradition with examples in which older models and
workmanship techniques were conjoined; the doors of Santa Sabina in Rome of
the 5th century would have witnessed to this completely had they been preserved
in their original form. In any event, although a small number of Antique doors
have been preserved, they do, together with data from written sources and the
knowledge that we have, give us an outline impression of the doors of the portal

10 A reconstruction of today’s and the former portal and part of the doors is given
by George Niemann, o. c. (7), plate VII and XIV; Antique examples in this country have
been studied by B. Ilakovac, »Rimska vrata s koso užlijebljenim pragom«, Radovi Instituta
JAZU u Zadru, X (1963), pp. 171-211; on p. 202 he gives a tabular review of 6 Roman
door frames from Salona and Zadar.

11 For a synthesis of Roman woodworking see R. B. Ulrich, Roman Woodworking,
Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007. For the making of wooden doors,
the Romans used mostly oak and silver spruce.

12 The first historical mention of the spheres, in which their double (functional and
formal) function is connected is given by R. Eitelberger von Edelberg (Die Mittelalterlichen
Kunstdenkmale Dalmatiens, Wien, 1884, p. 179). An analysis of the construction ascertains
that their role in fixing the layers is negligible, since the elements of the structure are joined
with a large number of long iron nails. With a circular stalk of about 10 cm long the knobs
were hammered into holes (without glue of nails) deeply into the construction, primarily
so that they are firmly fixed into them with only the frictional force of the conical dowels.

122

of Diocletian’s Palace and its Mausoleum. Today’s portal of the St John in the
Lateran Basilica in Rome that, by way of curiosity, is an example quite opposite
to the doors of Split Cathedral, since the stone portal of the basilica (changes of
which stretch right up to the 18th century) was designed for the Antique doors,
which were probably transferred from the original basilica built in the 4th century,
could teach us something about, for example, the metrical ratios and dependence
between them, the modification of the Antique fastening of the door according to
the new portal and so on. In this link, since the measurements of the doors of the
Lateran Basilica correspond perfectly to the portal of the Mausoleum, we have
before us in the photographic montage the harmony of forms and ratios that was
once without any doubt incorporated into the whole of this portal as well as into
the others inside the palace (fig. 3). It is more likely though that the doors of the
mausoleum, within the characteristics of such doors, were partially made of a
hollow core construction, as drawn by Niemann.13

The fact is that the protomaster of the Split doors of the early 13th century
must have created a model that was consistent with the Antique architecture,
primarily with the very large portal within which he would have had to produce
the set iconographic idea of the whole, using the visual style of his time and its
determinants.

Since we do not know whether at the moment of conceiving and designing
it he had an Antique door before him or perhaps an early medieval door (or neit-
her), we cannot know whether he adopted from them any of their approaches, but
certainly their thickness, the way and the position in which it was fastened into
the portal, and perhaps the idea of the knobs was something that for sure belonged
to the features of the earlier doors in this place, related to refined joinery of the
late Roman empire.

The very planning and designing must have required a lot of time and
knowledge, which is proved to us by the complex construction of the doors and
the well-thought-out and precisely planned order of their construction.

In the final blueprint and in the actual production, they have been made of
a long sequence of component wooden elements, defined in their carving, with
tenons and mortises (380) already made, which were joined into a whole, accor-
dingly to a precisely planned order, with the successive hammering of at least 834
iron and bronze nails, of which only two have survived, and then only partially.

We were able to discover their original shapes by analysis of their remains
and the shapes of the holes, still in existence and making a perfect imprint of
them in the wood. The final applications, which have no load-bearing function,
were fixed on the whole with 224 more small and 336 rather larger pegs (in total
560), unique in Romanesque art in Dalmatia and some of the very few extant
13th century specimens in Europe. The smaller pegs are in fact slender slivers of

13 G. Niemann, o. c. (7), plates VII and XIV.

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wood about 3 mm in diameter, with a slightly conical shape, put into previously
drilled holes, and in the process of hammering in the case of assembling the
straight frames of the coffers (2 pegs in each frame), they were compressed and
became physically homogeneous with the wood of the doors. The shape of their
heads at the end was defined by the mallet within the round guide hole, probably
already drilled in. Large pegs were hammered into the bevelled carved frames of
a casetta or coffered panel (3 in each frame) and their heads with the final blows
of the mallet were forced into the surrounding panels, taking on their shape (fig.
4). On the doors of today, because of the fill and the various coatings of 1908,
the heads of the smaller nails are not visible, although they have remained on
parts of the original frames, but on three frames from Split Municipal Museum,
five of them have been preserved, three of them with perfectly preserved heads.
These very valuable technical finds were never extracted from the wood, but were
broken off while the doors were being disassembled in 1908. This, together with
analyses of the holes of the pegs that fell off while they were in the stores, has
enabled us to understand the whole technique of the preparation and execution of
this manner of joining wood structures in the High Middle Ages, in other words
to supplement existing knowledge. The heads of wooden pegs or nails can be
observed with careful examination of the photographs before the renovation of
1908, and they are the basic guidelines for the detection of the original frames
preserved in the doors up to that time, as well as a guideline about the number
preserved in the doors today, since in the process of renovation, because of the
relatively easy task of disassembly they did not have to be taken out (fig. 5). In
a very important parallel, the same material and principle and a similar model of
strengthening the joints of the basic parts of the structure were used in the choir
stalls of the cathedral in Split, but in them the pegs are much wider, for they have
a load-bearing function; they have a square cross-section and heads that have a
different square shape, in line with the surrounding flat surface. The doors, then,
originally represented a monumental and highly complex constructional organism
consisting of 380 segments of wood and about 1400 diverse nails and pegs; we
have found no evidence of gluing.

THE MEDIEVAL WORLD WITHIN ANTIQUE PARAMETERS

Although the wooden doors of the Romanesque Split Cathedral were not
designed simultaneously with the Antique building and its portal, their basic
determinants rather being set by them, and the cathedral was built within them,
their creation and construction and execution must still in every detail have been
devised within medieval parameters, primarily of the general and local metrical

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systems, the technical, technological and artistic levels, and ponderings on liturgy
and iconography.

Still, their ultimate composition, the iconographic arrangement, the rhythm
of reading the iconography, the depth of the carvings and reliefs, and the perspe-
ctive concept were completely harmonised with the existing portal in the whole
of the building.

Their basic composition in form, rhythm and articulation of the surface is
most like the coffered ceiling of the periptery and of the baptistery (Temple of
Jupiter) but with carved ribs, most probably having their direct model in other
ornamentation of the palace.14

Although the coffering of historical doors most often derives from their
construction, which is a characteristic of Antique doors too, and is proved to have
existed in a series of Dalmatian historical examples,15 Buvina’s doors are, as the
oldest wooden doors in Dalmatia, the only example with ornamented ribs and
coffers filled with figural reliefs, and are in terms of their articulation close to the
idea of the surface on the rood screens of the Early Middle Ages.

Buvina first of all had to devise the wooden structure of the leaves that had
to be in use every day, and, with a height of over five metres, exceptionally strong
and sturdy (the original dimensions were about 524 x 352 cm).16 For this reason
the basic grid of the door was designed in such a way that five thick, wide vertical
oak planks were joined, employing deep mortise and tenon joints reinforced with
metal nails, to 24 shorter cross and four ending planks.

After this, onto it was applied the vast and ponderous relief of the front layer
of the door (almost 19 square metres and weighing about 800 kg), which, although
composed of 346 segments, was designed and produced as a monolithic whole,
and the doors even today looks as if they were cast out of liquid wood in some
huge mould, with the almost invisible joints of the numerous component elements.
If we ignore for the moment their current uniform dark brown colour, their high
polish and waxy optical effect brought about by renovation – they were equally
monolithic, undoubtedly, in their original, newly carved form: impregnated,

14 Lj. Karaman, o. c. (3), pp. 3, 4; J. Belamarić, »Romanička umjetnost«, catalogue of
the exhibition Tisuću godina hrvatske skulpture (ed. Igor Fisković), MGC, Zagreb, 1997,
p. 62: »The decorative bands that edge the coffers are populated with figures that Buvina
in good part took from the actual portal of Diocletian’s mausoleum or cathedral and from
the opulently carved portal of the nearby Antique temple, which the baptistery entered in
the Early Middle Ages«.

15 I. Šprljan, »Tipovi vratnica u šibenskim eksterijerima«, Godišnjak zaštite spo­
menika kulture Hrvatske, Zagreb, XVIII (1992); XIX (1993), pp. 78-101: 78-80; Idem,
»Drvene vratnice u splitskim eksterijerima«, Kulturna baština, XXXII (2005), pp. 315-325.

16 Today’s dimensions of the doors are 525,3 x 254 cm (left leaf 530 x 179 cm / right
leaf 525,2 x 175 cm), while the dimensions as found in 1908 were a bit different (left leaf
524 x 173,7 cm / right leaf 524 x 179 cm) as shown by the photographs of three fields with
a tape measure with details that were written on them by Antonin Švimberský (taken on
July 19 and 21, 1908, before the works).

125

prepared, richly gilded and polychrome painted with a rhythm of various lively
colours according to a unique pattern created just for them, and when they were
put in place they looked like a huge painting, and a huge relief, but primarily just
like the lavish portals and doors at the entrance into a medieval cathedral.

Doors made in the Romanesque period for an Antique building must certainly
raise the issue of style. Naturally, in their making there was an attempt to imitate
and reproduce the style of Antiquity, in the ribs and in the decorative spheres.
The 28 figural reliefs, located in the deep square nests of the doors might have
been imagined as a world in themselves, but one that within the coffers managed
to retain its intimate expression, and yet create the dynamics of the narrative and
the homogeneity of the whole.

MATERIALS AND ANALYSIS OF TRACES

The material history of the doors in this place, whipped by salty Dalmatian
winds blowing from all quarters and the powerful sun, destroyed by timber in-
sects17 and frayed by everyday use, although with constant maintenance of their
strength, integrity and beauty, resulted in old, wobbly and cracked doors, partially
with unrecognisable carvings, partially with frames and spheres fallen off, with
the colour and brilliance faded away, and that, like the whole of the cathedral,
awaited in the dark a thoroughgoing renovation. Although preparations for the
renovation of the cathedral were started in 1852, in the end it was carried out no
sooner than between 1880 and 1885. On the same beginning of the works, for
the first time in their history the doors were taken down and placed against the
inner walls of the Temple of Jupiter, or St John’s Baptistery, on wooden beams
reinforced with stone blocks, where for the next 28 years they awaited the ending
of the works in the cathedral, and their own renovation to fit the new presentation
of the interior, the portal, the entry steps and the bell tower.18 Before they were

17 The type of borehole shows the insect Anobium punctatum or common furniture
beetle. Photographs before the renovation show that the activity of the insect was in inverse
proportion to the height of the doors, and the lower fields were the most damaged. This is
because of the accessibility and lower parts being less sheltered. From the same climatic
regions, on almost all known doors, including the two that we are following (Saints Sabina
and Mary), the fields of the lower row are much damaged, or in later restorations the remains
were discarded. In drawing up a list of depictions on the door Eitelberger in the lower row
of four recognised only one depiction (R. Eitelberger von Edelberg, o. c. (12), p. 179); the
first to identity all four was Ljubo Karaman, and today with various computer techniques we
can manage to conjure them up much closer to their original shape (M. Čulić, documenta-
tion of the CCI and the web site: https://www.mladenculic.com/3d-digital-reconstructions).

18 During the whole of this period there were long discussions about the way to
renovate them, and the choice of the first restorer. The chronology has been reconstructed

126

placed in the baptistery, they were photographed as a whole by Josef Wlha, who
9 years later took 14 details of the casseta’s or coffers19 (fig. 6).

In 1908 the renovation of the doors was confided to Antonin Švimberský,
and at the beginning of the works, Ivan Znidarčić, assistant conservator and Frane
Bulić’s right hand man, took an unknown number of photographs of the as-found
condition, three of which have survived20 (fig. 7). From the appearance of the
doors and the details that can be read off from the extant photos, it is certain that,
in their original form, they would have represented an invaluable treasure and a
real treat of chemical materials, historically established stratigraphies, in their
authentic form. However, in the renovation that ensued, they were lost forever.
Their original appearance is today covered with deformed traces, and tiny remains
physically and chemically contaminated with a series of materials. A new virtual
image of the whole of the doors, into which the results of months-long analyses of
the remaining traces and particles are incorporated today, arose out of long-lasting,
complex, multidisciplinary deliberations and procedures.

After the reconstruction of the structure of the original doors (fig. 8), in the
second phase thisreconstruction was backed up by a well founded proven colour-
ist pattern defined on just three complete fields and in three partially, while the
third phase comprised a reconstruction of the original appearance defined in every
detail in the interpretation of Mladen Čulić. The hypothetical reconstruction of the
whole of the painting of the door was done with computer brushes with the use of
previously designed pigments from a palette composed according to the overall
scientific knowledge, designed with a multimedia language21 (fig. 9).

One has to express one’s admiration of and gratitude to Frane Bulić, who
initiated the idea that the segments of the doors sawn off during the process of reno-
vation had to be carefully labelled and kept as archaeological artefacts in the Split
Archaeological museum. According to the results of mapping, 65 of the 132 sawn
off fragments were preserved (although we do not know whether they were all
stored away), since 2004 entrusted to Split Municipal Museum. This Romanesque­

by Stanko Piplović from documents from the Bulić Archive of the Split conservation de-
partment (S. Piplović, »Historijat obnove Buvininih vratnica na splitskoj katedrali 1908«,
Kulturna baština, XL (2014), pp. 297-314: 298).

19 Glass plates of the shots of Josef Wlha are kept in the Bildarchiv of the Austrian
National Library and comprise 16 shots. Copies of the photographs were sent in folders to
Split (an unknown number of folders) and Zagreb (7 folders of photographs (folders N5
and N6 cover Split)), which are kept in their original form an number of the Academy of
Fine Arts in Zagreb and are accessible in the academy library, partially at the link http://
www.alu.unizg.hr/alu/cms/front_content.php?idart=1862). All 16 photographs sent to the
Split conservation office for Dalmatia are in existence.

20 In the Hrvatski državni arhiv there are files of the restoration operation of 1908, to
which these photos belong, and were discovered, researched into and published in 2010 (F.
Ćorić - Z. Jurić, »Obnova Buvininih vratnica 1908. godine«, Portal, I (2010), pp. 75-88).

21 Materials that M. Čulić brought together are available at: https://www.mladenculic.
com/3d-digital-reconstructions.

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material from the original doors, uncontaminated by restoration processes, was
taken over into the programme of the works, together with the doors in situ.

In the process of complete renovation in 1908, which lasted five months, with
a whole series of far-going procedures, Antonin Švimberský did indeed restore to
the doors a decent strength, functionality and appearance, but he changed them,
irreversibly and diametrically from their as-found properties, interpreting them
in a new manner by the creation of a new physical, chemical and visual identity
for them. Most of the procedures Švimberský carried out are today extremely
dubious and in large part unacceptable. Nevertheless, this restoration operation
did set us free from a large and multilayered dilemma, which would certainly not
have resulted in the restoration of the doors to their original place, today. Thanks
to this restoration, which was entirely subordinated to the need to put the doors
back in use, and for the sake of reinforcement, all the metal parts were removed
and replaced with over 200 kg of steel screws, clamps and various elements,22 the
wood was impregnated with about 100 kg of resin, wax, oil and various coatings,
the paint being scraped off the surface, which was painted dark brown and var-
nished – the doors are today still in their original place, musealised in the context of
their origin and long duration, behind the porch doors of 1910. The initial concept
of Max Dvoŕàk was in the end harmonised with the views and possibilities in the
process of the work, with the working procedures and wishes of the local com-
munity, all of which, entailing major challenges, was coordinated by Frane Bulić.23

22 A. Švimberský in the drawings of the situation after the restoration inscribed the
weight of every metal element that he incorporated into the doors, apart from the screws.
He entered the weights in kg; for example, the bronze plate that he mounted by the upper
fixing mechanism of the doors weighed 8 kg, and the rod that passes through it is 26 kg
(the full scale cross section of this details is kept in the Split Archaeological Museum).
Frane Bulić says that the doors before the restoration were 1400 kg in weight (source: S.
Piplović, o. c. (18), p. 299). Calculation of the specific weights of untreated oak, walnut,
larch and iron as against the mass of the doors has proved that their weight was increased
by about 600 kg during the renovation. About 200 kg of various steel elements were built
in, about 100 kg of oil, resin and wax was put into the wood, and the new oak construction
at the back is about 300 kg.

23 F. Ćorić - Z. Jurić, o. c. (20), pp. 77, 85 (n. 13); F. Ćorić, »Teorijski aspekti konzer-
vatorskog koncepta za Buvinine vratnice iz 1908. godine«, catalogue of the exhibition
Drvene romaničke vratnice splitske katedrale - istraživanje, restauriranje i zaštita, Zagreb,
May 8 to June 8, 2018, Zagreb, 2018, pp. 24-25; opposite, the conservator’s concept that
was considered equally with this proposed the preservation of the doors in their as-found
state, with the implementation of basic conservation works, after which they should be
exhibited in the building of the old Bishop’s Palace that abutted on the northern side onto
the cathedral. But in the 20th century it burned down, and the doors would have been certain
to have been destroyed in such a fire, perhaps totally.

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HISTORICAL DRAWINGS OF THE CATHEDRAL AND VISUAL
DEPICTIONS OF THE DOORS

In the basic analysis of the architecture of the mausoleum, four orthogonal
niches were placed at right angles to each other. The other four, semicircular,
niches were placed half way between them. The ceiling of the western entry niche
is today curved in a slight arch (13 cm) and does not conclude with cornices as the
analogous niches do, for in this place one would have interfered with the opening
of the doors. The ceiling was entirely produced in the renovation of 1885 accord-
ing to the understanding of its original form. The renovation was headed by Alois
Hauser, together with Frane Bulić, as main conservator for the central commission
for historical monuments for Dalmatia, who was the chief of the Archaeological
Museum from 1883 to 1923. Frane Bulić wrote: »it was most troublesome to repair
the strongly built arch of the top of the entry door, which was 3.5 metres long
and 2.5 metres wide, and consisted of voussoirs and dentil blocks up to 1.6 metre
thick.24 The situation that faced Bulić and Hauser was probably defined by the
building of the choir above the entry door, which together with the complicated
and cumbersome wood construction in the middle of the cathedral was found and
described by Valier in 1579.25 A drawing of the interior of the cathedral of 1757
shows the situation after the choir was moved to a new building behind the high
altar in 1615, but without the wooden construction of the choir that remained here
until 1880, and without the door, which had to be permanently open.26

The first architectural depictions of cathedral and portal subsequently to those
of Palladio and Adam were made by Vicko Andrić in 1852 and 1853.27 Although
in the cross-section of the situation of the cathedral as found he drew in all the
wooden elements in orange ink, he did the cross section through the entry portal
without the wooden doors, although they were then standing open. Hauser drew
the same situation, the state as found and his plan for renovation, but he too failed

24 L. Jelić - F. Bulić - S. Rutar, Vodja po Spljetu i Solinu, Split, 1894, p. 101.
25 The appearance of the cathedral in 1579 during Valier’s visit is described in visita-
tions, and conjured up the wooden construction of the time in the middle of the church and
around the walls, see J. Belamarić, o. c. (8), pp. 167-196.
26 Charles Louis Clérisseau, ink and gouache drawing, 26.3 x 24 cm, today in the
Hermitage was first published in: I. Gordon Brown, Robert Adam & the Emperor`s Palace,
Monumental reputation, Edinburgh, 1992, p. 116.
27 Although they were drawn by Andrea Palladio in the 1550s (pencil, geometrical
projection) and by Johann B. Fischer von Erlach in 1721, then a ground plan and a cross
section was published in the Farlati work of 1761, and in the Robert Adam 1764 publica-
tion, they were also generalised drawings. D. Kečkemet, Robert Adam, Dioklecijanova
palača i klasicizam, Nakladni zavod Matice hrvatske, Zagreb, 2003, pp. 15, 21, 24, plates
XXVI, XXXIV. For the drawings of Andrić see: D. Kečkemet, Vicko Andrić, arhitekt i
konzervator 1793-1866, Regionalni zavod za zaštitu spomenika kulture i Književni krug
Split, Split, 1993, plates III and IX.

129

to draw the doors. There is, then, no visual reference to them right up 1884 and
1887 when they were drawn by R. Eitelberger von Edelberg28 and T. G. Jackson29
respectively. However, the oldest pictorial representation of the doors is not either
of theirs but the recently discovered watercolour of Petar Zečević of 1846. This
watercolour is a realistic document of the appearance of two complete and four
partial figural reliefs, and Zečević paid particular attention to toning the drawing
brown, which must have represented the 18th century patina,30 while the remains
of the polychromy were emphasised with graphite pencil (fig. 10).

Although it does not include the doors, Andrić’s cross section is nevertheless
important, for it shows that the ceiling of the entry niche before the renovation
consisted of two transverse rows of ashlars, even though he drew it straight, just
like Adam and Cassas. Hébrard’s cross section of the cathedral of 1912, which is
also the first architectural depiction of the doors, shows that in the renovation both
of the courses of blocks were replaced.31 If we compare the former construction
of the ceiling with the floor of the niche, which does indeed consist of two huge
monoliths of stone, we can see that the floor and ceiling courses had the same
dimensions, although the upper part was composed of two rows of seven voussoirs
in a slightly curved arch. The surface of the floor monoliths was modified after the
renovation and just before the placing of the recently restored doors in 1908 to
their current place. After the renovation the doors were fixed into the newly made
ceiling, into grooves, mortises, that were carved into the fresh stone precisely for
the new fixing mechanism that was designed by Švimberský and which was made
of steel and bronze. The upper mechanism on both sides, as shown by drawings
found in the archives of Split Archaeology Museum,32 end about 43 cm into the
doors, while the dimensions of the lower mechanisms are not given in the drawing.
The fixing rod of the upper mechanism goes into a steel housing that is fixed to the
ceiling with two screws screwed into knurled nuts fixed into the holes with liquid
lead. On the back of the doors on these lines is an opening with a safety screw that
can be drawn out, and the rod can be retracted into the door. In the procedure of
disassembly, then, the doors can be drawn out of the ceiling mechanisms, slanted
and pulled out of the lower grooves. The upper mechanism is mobile, then, while

28 R. Eitelberger von Edelberg, o. c. (12), pp. 178-181.
29 T. Graham Jackson, o. c. (3), pp. 46-50, plate XVIII (between pp. 48-49), found
the doors in the baptistery in both visits to the cathedral, in 1884 and 1885.
30 A. Duplančić, »Petar Zečević, Detalj Buvininih vratnica (1846.)«, Drvene
romaničke vratnice splitske katedrale – istraživanje, restauriranje i zaštita, o. c. (23), pp.
54, 55.
31 E. Hébrard - J. Zeiller, Spalato. Le Palais de Dioclétien, Paris, 1912, p. 73.
32 After the renovation of the doors, Frane Bulić determined to have the sawn-off
segments labelled and deposited in the museum together with the drawings that the re-
storer never managed to make during the time he spent working in Split, and drew them
in Chrudim, Bohemia, by February 1909, and sent them to Split. The drawings have the
designation of the file they refer to (ZK 5435); one of the four files that Franko Ćorić found
in the State Archives in Zagreb, in F. Ćorić - Z. Jurić, o. c. (20).

130

the lower somewhat more slender rod is fixed and wedged into the floor into which
holes had been previously carved, with bronze plates built in: they were 20 x 16
x 6 cm and weigh as much as 14.5 kg. The rods of the lower mechanisms are also
provided with screws on the back of the door, but they do not have any place for
being slid back within the housing.

Twenty eight centimetres from the walls on both sides, and in the whole
depth of the niche, the surfaces of the original level of the floor are left; since
1908 they have served as the base for the doors. Between these surfaces, the re-
maining plateau through which the cathedral is entered, has been re-carved in a
slight slant up to the line of the connection with the current floor of the cathedral.
Proof that this was done after the renovation is provided in a photograph from
the photographic archives of the conservation department in Split, taken between
1885 and 1908, showing the entry niche from the church; on this picture, at the
join of the floor of the niche with the floor of the church we can see part of a step.
The floor of the cathedral of today and that time too is from the 15th century, and
the original level was 18 cm below, and the step shows that the floor of the entry
niche originally was higher than the floors of the other niches of the mausoleum,
and it was entered by two steps down, as drawn by Hébrard and Niemann. Vis-
ible on the photo – and this is the only document we have – is the internal side of
the first porch door, dated back to the 17th – 18th century. One of the musealised
segments is the top fitting part of the right leaf into the stone ceiling, that is, a
segment of their original fixing. It consists of two layers of wood, of both oak and
walnut, that is, of both constructive layers of the doors that create a compact item
bearing traces of a former metal ring within which the wooden segment, in other
words the door, rotated (figs. 11a, 11b). The original fixing of the doors was quite
the opposite of that of today. The top mechanism was fixed, and the lower was
moveable. Then, the mortises in the side walls of the entry niche show that some
of the historical doors were closed with a horizontal pole or bar, which means
that they must have been opened from inside. The doors of the mausoleum must
have been opened from outside, for this was the only entrance, and it is very likely
that these traces belong to the Romanesque doors. Although today on the doors
there are no traces of any of the models of any previous fastening to the stone
framework, and no traces of locks, on the drawing of the rear construction of the
door of Anton Švimberský, at a height of 160 cm, we can spot the traces of six
holes that he filled in with pieces of wood. On the photograph of the same detail
of the face of the door before the renovation, we can see nails in the same places.
Pursuant to this we can propose an approximate model of the lock that in terms
of historical classifications corresponds to the time and type of the Romanesque
doors. In Dalmatia to date, only one external mounting of a lock from the time
has been found, and in fact we have no more direct links about the typology of
locks of the time, as we do have for Antiquity. Before the renovation, the doors

131

opened first with the left and then with the right-hand leaf33 and traces of a lock
are to be found actually on the left hand leaf, and this is one of the pieces of evi-
dence about how the doors were locked. Such traces recorded tell us that the small
southern door was the usual main entrance into the church, while the large door
was opened from inside, most often only the left leaf, while the whole was opened
only perhaps in the case of major liturgical solemnities. The everyday entry into
the Romanesque church would according to these conclusions have been on the
southern side, through wooden doors that have not survived, but which, judging
from the stone framework and the preserved traces of the fixing mechanism, were
similar to the door of the large portal.34

MATERIALS PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY

Although the doors are today unified in form and colour down to the detailed
level, the extant elements and drawings, as well as the files discovered, prove to
us that their appearance today, with all the impression of integrity and coeval-
ness, conceals a different picture. After the mapping of the extent segments, the
analyses conducted, and research into the files in line with these new understand-
ings, it was concluded that the door had once even before 1908 been structurally
restored, some of the segments being restored. C14 analysis35 showed that this
was at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. Since the segment on which the
analysis was conducted does not differ from the other elements – there is the
same choice of wood, same shape down to detail, tool marks – it is almost certain
that on the doors of today it is practically impossible with any certainty to notice
the chronological diversity of the segments, although within the formal features
of the reliefs of the doors it is possible to spot different hands. Mapping of the
­elements and comparison with the as-found state took out of the consideration

33 We do not know why Švimberský transferred the edge carved strip from the right
to the left leaf. Since it was not planned to be operational after the restoration, the reason
might have been the conclusion that it was originally in this place, or equalising the width
of the doors. In any case, there is proof of the change in the descriptive documentation
of the operation, without any explanation (the question was considered by Karaman and
Ćorić - Jurić).

34 J. Strzygowsky, O razvitku starohrvatske umjetnosti, Zagreb, 1927, pp. 155, 157;
T. Marasović, Dalmatia Praeromanica, Split-Zagreb, 2011, p. 258; Istočni Jadran i Bizant,
catalogue of an exhibition, Split, MHAS, 28 September 2018, Split, 2018, p. 93.

35 Radiocarbon analyses of the doors was instigated by Joško Belamarić thinking that
perhaps figural reliefs of the doors were later than the other reliefs, which in the end, for
the actual wood, proved to be accurate. Although not in the hypothesised temporal relation,
the various dating of these layers of the doors set off a number of new questions thanks to
which new technical details were discovered and studied.

132

the elements of the last renovation, and the review of the doors and elements
from the stores for the sake of selecting samples for five C14 analyses was aimed
at the other segments, of which, after the first elimination, there were more than
250 left (figs. 12a, 12b). Chosen for C14 analysis by the AMS method, pursuant
to all the indications, were: rib 79/90R, at the top of the right leaf; an element of
oak with a fixing element from Split Municipal Museum (designated NEP 16),
belonging to the far right vertical plank of the oaken grid; as well as the wood of
two figural reliefs: no. 1, the Annunciation, and no. 28, the Ascension. Graphs of
C14 AMS analysis of the rib and the oak core are essentially different from both
of the graphs of the figural reliefs. The wood of the reliefs of the Ascension is
with a maximum range of measurement uncertainty of +/– 30 years, suggested
in the interpretation of the results of analyses carried out in the Ruđer Bošković
Institute by the Radiocarbon Research Laboratory of Brussels, might have been
felled at the earliest in 1210 and at the latest in 1285, within which range there
is the same percentage of probability (95.4%).36 Wood of the same relief is not
explained within augmented measurement uncertainties as interpreted by the
Belgian laboratory, and according to the originally conducted results of the RBI,
within +/– 20 years the tree was felled towards the middle of the 13th century, and
after it, 1221-1276 (95.4%) (out of which 1245-1273 at 60.8% with a median at
1254), while the relief of the Annunciation is dated to 1218-1274 (95.4%).37 After
agreement that here too the larger range of measurement uncertainties should be
included into the originally obtained results, according to the new interpretation of
this laboratory, the relief of the Ascension includes at the earliest the year 1206 and
at the latest 1282, and the Annunciation at the earliest 1206 and the latest 1281.38
The two ribs and the wood of the oak of the basic construction of the door have a
very similar graph, which, as against the coffers, at first opens the possibility of
an essentially earlier dating of the basic grid of the door lined with the ornamental
strips. The last possible year of the felling of the oak tree from which the central
construction of the door is made, with a measurement uncertainty of +/– 20 years
at the earliest covers 1046, while the latest would be 1216 (95.4%), while at +/–

36 Within this large range, the probability at the edges of the graph is negligible, and
increases towards the middle of the 13th century, to wit 1220-1235, 13.4%, and for 1240-
1275, 54.8% (in all 68.2%). This interpretation of the analysis of the wood of the relief
of the Ascension, carried out at the RBI was requested by Matheu Bouldin, who head the
Radiocarbon Research Laboratory of the Royal Institute for the Cultural Heritage in Brus-
sels. In their experience, measurement uncertainty of this analysis of +/– 20 years is over
optimistic, and they propose an interpretation in the framework of +/– 30 years.

37 Of this, 1225-1223, 17%, of 1243-1266, 5.12%, with a median of 1248. Results
of AMS C14 analysis of the RBI have been published (I. Krajcar Bronić, »Određivanje
starosti Buvininih vratnica i korskih klupa iz splitske katedrale, te drvenih greda iz crkve
sv. Donata u Zadru metodom 14C«, Drvene romaničke vratnice splitske katedrale, o. c.
(23), pp. 36-37).

38 Final report of the RBI, drawn up by Ines Krajcar Bronić, 2018.

133

30 years it would cover the span from 1041 to 1219 (95.4%).39 The ribs, on the
other hand, at +/– 20 years cover the 1148 to 1219 period (95.4%),40 while at +/0
30 years, 1042 to 1223 (95.4%).41 There are two possibilities of the differences of
the groups of graphs of the reliefs and the other segments of the doors: the wood
of the oak and walnut of the base of the door was left to age for decades, and the
whole of the doors should be dated according to the wood of the figural reliefs,
the percentage of probability of which is essentially augmented according to the
middle of the century, while for the year 1214 it would be very small. The other
possibility is that the doors were made between 1150 and 1223 and the coffers
were produced and fitted in some decades later (figs. 13, 14).

After long consideration and study of the properties of the separate segments
and also the door as a whole given the analysis results concerning dating we have
little doubt of the chronological homogeneity from the basic construction on the
one hand and the figured reliefs on the other. The overall conclusion favours the
hypothesis that the base of the wood consists of well-aged wood, while the figural
reliefs (which is borne out by recent knowledge about wood-carving of the Middle
Ages in Europe) were most likely carved in fresh wood. Since their surface, and the
traces of the original working, were seriously damaged in the operations of 1908,
it is impossible to find parallels in the technique of carving, the »handwriting« of
the sculptor, the carving tools and so on, and crucially instructive is a comparison
of the particles of the polychromy and gilding of the reliefs with those on the base
of the doors, which indicated an almost identical technology. However, the most
important support is the conclusion that all the joints of the reliefs with the door
base are perfectly concordant.

The renovation of the doors in 1908, then, destroyed the surface physical-
chemical properties of the materials, took from us certain of their original ele-
ments, almost all the remains of the polychromy, almost all of the metal material
of the joints, most of the traces of the working of the wood and a large part of the
original formal treatment. The reason lies in the choice of the method for conserv-
ing the wood; and the segments of the door, after the disassembly and cleaning,
were soaked in a water bath with substances such as vinegar and wormwood,
after which they were slowly seethed in hot turpentine, and then rubbed and
polished, and the polychromy was scraped off with a toothed chisel.42 Although
these materials did not get into the deep structure of the wood, as proved to us by

39 In the narrowing of this range, the greatest probability is that the wood was felled
between 1147 and 1216 (58.2%) and after and before this range the possibility sharply falls
by several percentage points.

40 Of which, 1150-1219 (73.7%).
41 Of which, 1117-1223 (69.2%).
42 F. Ćorić - Z. Jurić, o. c. (20), p. 78. Examining the toolmarks, I ascertained that
Švimberský made a toothed chisel, with which he systematically scraped off the firmest
layers of the polychrome, naturally also damaging traces of the working of the wood.

134

microsections, those of the surface more or less ceased to have any relevance for

detailed exploration of the style and technique of the work, including the individual
style of the carver, as noted long since.43 The whole model of the research was

accordingly focused on the analysis of the structure of the doors and the domains

of microscopy and microscopic analyses, focusing on the 65 elements of the doors

from Split Municipal Museum.

THE MAKING OF THE DOORS – WOOD, NAILS AND TOOLS

Today the dimensions of the doors are 525.3 x 356 x21 cm (without the 13.2
cm spheres), the total surface area is 18.7 square metres, and total volume 2.47
cubic metres. The basic construction, which today lies between two other wooden
layers of the doors, is visible on a small area of the back of the doors, since the
major part was in 1908 covered with the oak grid. From that we obtained the basic
information about the construction, supplemented with segments from the museum
and the drawings of Švimberský together with a lot of analytical pondering. The
structure was then made out of 34 planks of oak (Quercus L.) that had the same
rectangular cross section – 31 x 5.2 cm – fitted together with mortise and tenon
joints. The mortises are as wide as the planks and are made in the centre (30 x 10
x 3 cm). The planks of the top and bottom rails are joined via long, shallow and
diagonal mortises. The structure was originally fixed with 130 ca 8 cm – long nails.
Not one is in existence, and data for reconstruction are understood according to
the shape of the holes on the segments from the museum. The construction of each
leaf was done in such a way that between 3 vertical planks the height of the whole
leaf, at each side, six short planks (60 cm) were fitted in, all told, then, 12. It was
combined into a whole with 2 top and bottom rails and 4 at the sides. The order
in which they were put together was as follows. Into the middle vertical plank, at
every 40 cm, mortises were gouged out, into which, at each side, 6 short planks
with tenons were fitted. The vertical plank was carved in a bevel at top and bot-
tom, tapered and then fitted 25 cm into mortises of the upper and lower rails. At
the end the side vertical planks with their mortises were joined to the short planks
and the top and bottom rails. The nails were most probably hammered in after the
whole construction had been assembled, without any guide holes previously been
made, so that the joint should be stronger. For the hard, dry, well-aged wood not
to split, soft copper nails were used, an old technology known in antiquity as well.
Although not a single nail has survived, in one of the holes the remains of one are
left, from which the composition of the metal has been demonstrated to be copper

43 Lj. Karaman, o. c. (3), p. 6.

135

with a little iron.44 The oak is of high quality, and judging from the visible side
surfaces, the edges on the back and the three elements out of the door has been
cut radially, and to this day is untouched by insects. The condition of this wood,
considering the age, is amazingly good. It is strong, hard, uncracked, elastic and
has not shrunk, the structure is even and it has a nice even colour (fig. 15).

Over the whole of the Mediterranean evidence of the use of oak goes back to
prehistory, and it was also used of course in antiquity, as we learn from physical
remains and written sources. In general, throughout history in these areas, oak
was used in the making of architectural constructions, of whole houses, and in
shipbuilding. The example closest to the doors is a group of roof beams of the
Church of St Donatus, Zadar, from the 8th century.45 Since in the analysis of wooden
remains it is possible to ascertain the genus but not the species of the tree, we
do not know which kind of oak the doors are made from. In Croatia, 14 of them
are registered today. Of these, growing on the Dalmatian coast are pubescent oak
(Quercus pubescens), known in Croatia as dub, from which Dubrovnik has taken
its name; holm oak (Quercus ilex), Turkey oak (Quercus cerris) and peripherally
common oak (Quercus robur). Of these, Antique sources mention holm oak and
common oak used in shipbuilding and architecture. The first is evergreen, hard
and difficult to work; the second is deciduous and suitable for working. And yet
in medieval Dalmatian shipbuilding, analyses to date have ascertained only sessile
oak and Turkey oak, while others are determined only to the level of genus. Pubes-
cent oak in ancient times was very widely distributed along the Dalmatian coast,
and was probably the most often used, although it has not been ascertained among
analysed specimens, which are sporadic, but are recorded in written sources.

Traces of the technology of working of the wooden log after felling, and of
removal of bark and sapwood are nowhere visible because of the few accessible
original surfaces of the doors, and we do not known whether the technique of
sawing the log was used (with a pit saw), or cleaving, two traces of which have
been found. After the basic division the wooden log into planks, their surfaces
were worked with a flat or bearded side ax, which can be seen in Dalmatia in
several historical depictions. In the 13th century they are shown on the choir stalls

44 XRF analysis of 11 samples of metals from the segments of the doors from the
Split Municipal Museum was carried out by Domagoj Mudronja in the Natural Science
Laboratory of the CCI: Laboratory report: 91/2013, sample no. 19660. In the case of soft
and porous wood iron nails were used, with previously drilled guide holes, and in the case
of hard wood, copper, which perhaps ensured greater strength and better exploited the
wood-metal bond. Copper nails were also found from Antiquity (for example, in Salona,
finds kept in the Arheološki muzej u Splitu). see: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/journals/
conservation-journal/issue-04/corrosion-of-metals-associated-with-wood.

45 B. Obelić - A. Sliepčević, »Korekcija 14C rezultata starosti drvenih greda iz crkve
sv. Donata u Zadru dendrokronološkom metodom«, VAMZ, 3.s., XXXII-XXXIII (1999-
2000), pp. 197-206: 205. There are five beams in the display of the Archaeological Museum
in Zadar, and the rest are in its storage facility.

136

of Split Cathedral and the northern wall of the Church of St John the Baptist in
Trogir46); in the 14th in the Register of Dubrovnik woodworkers in a number of
places drawn over the course of time from the 14th to the 17th century47) and in
the 16th century (the gravestone of a Senj shipwright from the cemetery church of
St Francis in Rab48). In archaeological museums in Split and Zadar we can find
Antique axes of similar form, not on the whole classified according to purpose,
and a particularly significant find is that of a group of tools in the grave of an Il-
lyrian carpenter, among which there is one such axe.49 Examples from the early
medieval period have been discussed in one study,50 but the overall development
of this tool in our area has not been unified, and we have to orient ourselves
via fundamental studies for the research into this area, very little known in this
country.51 After the axe-work, the final working of the planks of the oak grid was
done with an adze, with a straight and slightly rounded blade. In the stores of the
Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments we find a medieval side ax and
an adze, probably coeval with the doors.52

In the renovation procedure, the restorer Švimberský completely disas-
sembled the door into its component parts, including the oaken grid, from which
he took out the nails, then enlarged the holes and reconstructed them with wood
plugs; the planks were treated by conservation and painting. When the planks
were put together again, he used 130 long brass screws, equivalent to the amount
of nails he had discovered. The museum has three segments of this construction.

Having carefully measured the parts of the oak structure we can conclude
that although it had a regular shape and that the planks were placed at right angles
to each other, the measures regularly differ from each other, which was system-
atically repeated on the whole of the doors. From the 13th century, the Antique
measurement system gave ground to various local units of measure based on parts
of the human body; the lakat (arm to the elbow, ell or cubit in English, about 60

46 C. Fisković, »Dopune ikonografiji splitskih korskih klupa 12. stoljeća«, Prilozi
povijesti umjetnosti u Dalmaciji, XXX (1990), pp. 69-94: 80-82); this author was the first,
and is still the only one, to list examples of depictions of hewing axes on our coast.

47 I. Prijatelj Pavičić, »Prilog poznavanju minijatura iz matrikule dubrovačke
bratovštine drvodjelaca«, Croatica Christiana Periodica, XXXVII (2013), 71, pp. 1-22;
the photographs of all the pages are kept in the photo collection of the Dubrovnik section
of the CCI and have not been published.

48 M. Domijan, Rab-The City of Art, Zagreb, 2007, pp. 201-209: 207.
49 S. Gluščević, »Grob tesara s nekropole na Relji«, Diadora, XXVIII (2014), pp.
53-81.
50 A. Milošević, »Ranosrednjovjekovna sjekira iz Vedrina i drugi nalazi sjekira tog
vremena na području Hrvatske«, VAMZ, s. 3, XX(1987), pp. 107-128.
51 W. L. Goodman, A History of woodworking tools, G. Bell and Sons, London, 1964;
F. van Tyghem, Op en om de Middeleeuwse bouwwerf, Brussels, 1966; M. Gerner, Das
Zimmerhandwerk, Hannover, 1986, pp. 70-125.
52 T. Burić - A. Jurčević, »Srednjovjekovni alati za obradu drva i vanjski okov brave
(13. stoljeće)«, Drvene romaničke vratnice splitske katedrale, o. c. (23), pp. 76, 77.

137

cm), the stopa (foot, about 31 cm) and the palac or thumb (an inch, about 3 cm),
which are different from each other, and it is possible that in this case measure-
ment systems mixed up in the procedure of the work were used, and at the end
completely adjusted and harmonised with the basically defined measures within
the framework of the portal. Although for the width of the ribs of the doors the
basic measure closest to the Byzantine foot (31.5 cm) was used, it then varied
between 2 and 8 cm, and this unevenness in the measurement and designing was
continued on the front segment of the door. Most probably within the set measures,
the whole time there was a struggle to make the structural pattern fit the actual
production and in adjusting it to the set framework, as in the creation of the choir
stalls of the cathedral.53

THE PERSPECTIVE RENDERED IN THE WOODEN CONSTRUCTION

The whole front layer of the door is made of walnut wood (Juglans regia L.),
the whole relief and figural depiction being carved of 349 individual elements and
assembled on the oaken construction according to a carefully planned order which,
like the assembly system, was very important, since it was to ensure strength and
compactness. This is why the overall building of the doors was done in seven or
perhaps eight phases. After the making of the oak structure, the frontal layer of
the doors was built in 6 phases (42 + 28 + 112 + 112 + 48 + 7 = 349 items), in
an order planned in such a way that the mounting of the final set of elements (the
straight frames of the coffers) closed all the joins and the main metal nails, and for
this purpose small pegs were used, impossible to see under the polychromy. The
description of the doors before the renovation mentions a back lined with larch
boards hammered in with a series of iron nails. Today we cannot tell whether they
were part of the original structure of the doors, or whether they were a historical
addition, since in the renovation all the boards were discarded. The back of the
figural reliefs was painted with red lead, which shows that the backs of the coffers
were perhaps open to the view, the way they are today, in which case the larch
boards would have been a historical addition. But if they did really originally
cover the oak grid, this phase of the works would naturally have been done at the
end, making it the eighth.

53 An analysis of the grid of the backs of the Romanesque choir stalls in Split Cathe-
dral, the first example in this country of this kind of manner of explaining constructions
used for demonstrating the source of style and influence was given by Jurica Matijević,
»Analiza komponiranja naslona korskih sjedala splitske katedrale«, Kulturna baština,
XXXIX (2013), pp. 345-362, listing the relevant references (p. 356, n. 10).

138

The first of the six groups of segments that created the frontal layer of the
doors consists of 42 pieces of moulded and carved panels of the same width and
thickness (4 and 22 cm), grouped into 4 lengths. All of them are basically worked
and moulded in the same manner, except for those at the edge, which are bevelled
on one side, their straight edges being left as base for the frameworks of the leaves
of the door, as shown by the nail holes and the character of these surfaces. The
frames of the leaves of the doors are in fact carved strips of semicircular cross
section, of which today one is left at the join of the leaves of the door, while in all
probability there were at least six more. All the pieces of the carved strips, that
is, the ornamented ribs, after the basic moulding and bevelling of the edges 92.5
x 2.5 cm), carving, sawing and working of the tenons and mortises on the edges
of each segment (22 x 4.5 x 1.5 cm), drilling holes with an auger and a rounded
chisel for square-section nails (10 x 0.5 cm, width of head 1.8 cm) were tapped
onto the ribs of the oak construction of the doors. There were 480 nails, which we
can calculate by recalculating their distances from each other, 25 cm, which we
multiply with the total length of the rib times 2 (ca 60 m). Assembling the edging
strips went in the same way for both leaves: the first to be put on was the central
vertical strip, covering the height of three coffers. Fitted onto it afterwards were
two at each side in the mortise and tenon system (depth of mortise 4.5 cm). After
the assembly of the vertical edge rib, nails were hammered into the whole thing
which was then on the upper side strengthened with a horizontal rib the width of
the whole leaf. On both sides of this basic system a vertical rib the height of two
coffers were placed, into which two smaller horizontal strips were fitted, and then
two at the top, after which the edge verticals were assembled. At the end these
four new small sets were connected and fastened with forged nails. If the mortise
and tenon joints had not been used these elements could have been assembled in
any order, but in such a case the structure would have been much less strong and
compact. The making of the doors shows a high degree of understanding of the
art of joining wooden constructions and reflects an understanding of the system of
making structurally loaded wooden constructions. Such a joining system cannot
be found in a single other example from the Middle Ages in Dalmatia, but it is
not as complex as the choir stalls of Split Cathedral. The panels of the choir stalls
are not made in layers but are surfaces of elements fitted together into a chain,
produced with a superior knowledge of turning, carving and joinery, and highly
skilled precision. This was of course necessary because they had to be partly hol-
low. The structural stability of the panels was handled partially by the uprights at
the edges, and partially via the thick vertical boards at the back. Both construc-
tions directly reflect their functions in the liturgy of the cathedral, as well as the
architectural setting, which was strictly determined.

139

The technique of making the edging strips of the doors shows that these seg-
ments were shaped, rebated and carved before being assembled.54 By assembling
strips 22 cm wide on the ribs of the oak grid 35 cm wide, 28 beds for the panels
of figural reliefs were created. They rested on the oak frames over a width of 7.5
cm and were fixed onto them with eight hand forged nails (a total of 224, 8 to 10
cm long, head diameter 6 mm). The depth of the housing, 4 cm, was not sufficient,
and the panels were bevelled, and a depth of 6 cm was attained. This approach
made sure of the necessary thickness of the door, but also enabled the carving
of the scenes to be done in high relief. The dense arrangement of the surfaces
could be read off more clearly and from a greater distance, but most demanding
the vanishing point, because of the size of the doors and the and the small entry
platform, was just in front of them. The relief of the strips was 12 cm broad (not
14, as Karaman wrote55) and was done in deep relief: 16 mm in the upper half
and 8 mm in the lower, and the legibility of the ornamental strips was the same
in the perspective, while in the figural reliefs this was handled in some form of
enhanced depth of field of the depiction, and the upper fields were handled graphi-
cally, sharply and were deeply incised.

We can say of these doors, of which Karaman said: »Master Buvina did not
leave a square centimetre on the door empty and without ornamentation«, with
his masterly handling of the art of sculptural design in both its harmony with the
architectural setting and the complex perspective arcs and points around, in front
and below the actual doors, the artist made sure of the visibility of each one of
the segments, while preserving the clear perceptions of the basic flat divisions and
compositional solutions from the viewpoint just before them, and from a more
distant view. This basic division, and all the earlier advantages achieved, were fur-
ther enhanced by the ornamented, obliquely placed frames round the coffers (112
items), articulated with three decorative models in a certain rhythm of repetition
over the whole of the doors56 (fig. 16). They are joining items of the coffers and the
strips, enhancing the side perspectives and in a kind of optical illusion elevating
the depictions to the surface, closer to us. Their front edges are cut straight, and
they rest on the frame of the figural reliefs, while the upper ones after assembly

54 Carpentry treatment of the ribs was done with a straight bearded goosewing axe, a
rounded adze, planes with straight and rounded blades, and saw and straight chisels. Nail
holes were drilled with a 4 – 5 mm auger. Carving was done with a compass and cutter,
straight chisels 4 and 10 mm wide, and U-shaped chisels 2, 4 and 7 mm wide, and a mallet
was also used.

55 Lj. Karaman, o. c. (3), p. 6.
56 In the process of analysing and mapping the elements of the doors, I ascertained
that 83 of the original 112 were still in existence in the doors. Of those dismounted in
1908, eight have been lost, and 14 are kept in Split, Muzej Grada. All are mapped with
appropriate labelling. For the making and carving of these frames, they used a saw, adze,
awl of 0.01 to 0.04 cm, a metallic drill hole marker 6 mm diameter, a flat chisel 4 mm and
10 mm wide, a U shaped gouge 2, 4 and 7 mm wide, a hand auger, dimensioned 0.2 cm,
0.5 cm and 2.4 and 2-5 mm in diameter were used.

140

were levelled with a straight chisel with the edges of the ribs. Then placed on this
surface were slender straight frames, which set off the ornamentation of the relief
inside the coffer from the ornamental sequence around everything. The frames
were moulded with one rabbet and with their height of 1.5 cm increased the depth
of coffers and ribs.57 If we add their heights we will arrive a coffer depth of 8 cm,
as mentioned by Karaman,58 that is the technological procedure used to achieve
it is explained.

Where there ribs intersect at right angles, there are 11-12 cm diameter flat
circles with 2.2 cm holes in the middle. Into these holes the stalks (2 x 10 cm) of
the wooden knobs (ca 7 cm in diameter) are fitted.

Originally there were 48 of them, but in 1908, there were 30. Eight of the
best preserved were left on the front of the doors (only one in its original posi-
tion), while the others were fixed into the new backing construction that Antonin
Švimberský made out of oak planks, varnished and decorated with the heads of the
pegs that he had made on the middle of one that he thought to be original, mark-
ing it with the year of 1214. The heads of the nails have no structural function,
rather they are used to mask the holes of the brass screws that join the back of the
door with the middle layer. Between the pegs, in a relatively regular arrangement,
Švimberský placed 24 knobs. This information is not mentioned in the description
of the operation, but is documented in drawings of 1909, and so can be added to
the other knowledge. With the original spheres, which were not turned but made
of several segments and fixed onto the newly built doors as final elements, it is
easier to ascertain and emphasise the arrangement of the reliefs and coffers, and
their geometrical relationship is strengthened. The spheres also add to the overall
impression of the door, or the door in this place, and define more clearly their
primary function, not allowing us to perceive them as a huge relief (fig. 17).

FIGURAL RELIEFS AND PERSPECTIVES

Each of the 28 frames of the figural reliefs has different dimensions, and all
the panels of these reliefs, partially placed beneath the oblique frames, are differ-
ent. Although they seem to be square in shape, all the reliefs are in fact wider than
they are high, by about one eighth, and the panels are in fact slightly horizontally
placed rectangles. The edging frames of the depictions vary within 3 cm (the

57 The mapping showed that on the doors there are 46 out of the 113 pieces removed,
of which 47 are lost, and 8 are kept in Split Municipal Museum. Of the eight in existence,
five are from the 13th century, together with the heads of pegs. For the making of the flat
frames with rabbets, a profiled plane was used.

58 Lj. Karaman, o. c. (3), p. 6.

141

smallest is 36.6 and the largest is 39.3 cm), and in width within 4 cm (the smallest
is 41 and the largest is 45 cm) Although the sizes of the panels are determined by
the dimensions of the opening of the portal, the standardisation of the symmetry
of their geometrical articulation went hand in hand with the compositions of the
depictions, as well as with the wooden material. Some depictions needed a few
centimetres of height more and some a few of width more than the others, and it
is possible that the actual matrices of these compositions had to be compressed
in both directions to adjust to the set squares of the coffers.59 In other words, by
articulating the given surface according to the basic assignment into 28 identical
excerpts, it would have had to have been divided into four vertical rows by seven
coffers, that is, seven vertical columns of four coffers each. The width of the coffers
was set by the width of the doors, and the height by the height of the doors. The
number of reliefs, 28,60 was possibly a given, while the choice of scene could be
determined within this demand, and thanks to the ratio of the dimensions of the
coffers had to be relatively uniform in terms of dimensions. The number of reliefs
was the same as on the doors of St Sabina, the portal of which has a higher height to
width ratio than the Split doors, and permitted a larger number of fields, and some
were placed vertically, to cover the whole of the surface. The basic articulation of
the Split door was determined by the construction of the oaken grid, and the width
of the strips, but because of the specifically deep frame of the portal, in a frontal
view, on the closed door the edge verticals could not have been visible together
with the spheres. Accordingly in the interior side of the door frames grooves had
to be carved for the knobs or the doors could not have been closed, being visible
only in the open position in the whole of their lavishness and harmony. The doors,

59 As with other doors, the ratio of width to height of the portal determined the width
of the coffers, i.e., the reliefs. To be shown in their entirety some scenes that required a
greater area on the doors of St Sabina occupied two fields in height, and on the doors of
Sankt Maria on the Capitol in Köln, they covered two fields in width. As against them, the
Split doors have a symmetrically articulated surface, which could have been done because
of the particularly large coffers of this big portal, the height to width ratio, and perhaps
because of the model of the patterns used in the creation of the compositions of the 28
scenes. The Rome doors have 28 fields, although 12 of them cover the height of 2 fields. If
they were all of the same dimensions, each row would have 10 scenes, and the doors would
have 40 scenes in total. This is directly connected with the ratio of the dimensions of the
portal, the height to width ratio of which is greater than that of the Split portal. The doors
from Cologne are very narrow, and the scenes are either stretched or compressed. For the
scenes to have an equal amount of space, the doors would have to have 16 or 32 fields. In
all three cases, the dimensions of the portal are directly connected with the iconography
on the doors.

60 S. Sekulić-Gvozdanović, »Sustavi povijesnih mjera. Uvod u istraživanja hrvatske
metrologije«, Prostor, I (1994) 1-2, pp. 49-76: 51: »From Babylonian times the typical
number is 28. A person has 10 fingers, but 28 visible limbs. For millennia it was considered
a whole. The Pythagoreans still in the Middle Ages thought the number 28 perfect, and it
was marked as a numerus perfectus«, the doors of Santa Sabina in Rome have, or had, an
equal number of depictions (ten reliefs have not survived).

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in opening, and closing, rotated around the axes of these edge verticals, and they
had, like those of antiquity, to be wider than the opening visible from outside.

Only at the end of this long path of devising, designing and adjusting could
the separate world of the 28 scenes from the life of Christ be created in peace,
able to be read, like the pages of a book, from left to right in a zig-zag trajectory
from the first relief left downwards, and up again to the far right. For the making
of the relief, within the imagined concept of the doors, it was necessary to provide
thick, broad boards of wood (5 cm) that had a lasting, strong and compact, uni-
fied structure, and suitable thus for fine carving, the most suitable being walnut
wood. The direction of growth of the tree of all 28 panels was placed horizontally,
as shown by the structure of the growth lines in situ (still more marked on the
archival photographs), which means that the height of the relief is an indicator of
the width of the tree trunk. The average height of a relief is about 5 cm smaller
than the average width, and the horizontal placement of the panels could mean
they were tailored to the accessible wood material, that is, that from the material
that could be procured the needed width of relief could be obtained. If they had
been permitted to be narrower, they might have been carved vertically, and in a
vertical sequence of seven reliefs on a single plank, that is, all of the reliefs in a
sequence of four vertical planks. In this case the strips would have been applied
over or around them at the same level, in both cases they would have been much
shallower, as are for different reasons the doors in Cologne.

Thinner doors would have meant deviating from the given spatial param-
eters and would make the surface less artistically readable from all perspective
angles. Although the cutting of the panels into squares enabled the attainment of
the iconographic idea and spatial plan, the horizontal placing tells us more about
the wooden material used and the techniques of carving employed. Walnut wood
is easier to carve in the direction of growth than across, so that the reason for the
horizontal placing of the reliefs could not have been that, quite the opposite in fact:
for planks sufficiently wide for the imagined reliefs to be obtained, the carving was
made much more difficult. The reliefs of the doors of St Mary’s (like other wooden
doors and reliefs), prove this hypothesis (for all the figural reliefs are vertical)
but the doors of St Sabina rebut it. In the vertical fields of these doors, the plank
is placed in the direction of growth of the tree; in the shallow fields, it is always
placed horizontally, although the width of field is the same. I believe this is directly
connected with the characteristics of the wood used and the technique of working.
The cypress from which the reliefs of St Sabina are carved is because of its tough
structure more fragile to work in the direction of growth, and the carver avoided
that wherever he was able, but it could also suggest the aging of the wood. Panels
of the reliefs of the doors in Cologne of walnut however are placed vertically, in
the direction of the growth of the tree, which enables a dimensional tracking of
the oak vertical planks with those on which the frontal, carved layer of the door is
placed. In the case of complex constructions this is a very important factor, but in

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