# Bernward door \(detail\) [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [UNKNOWN MASTER, German]() - Date: 1001-1050 - Technique: Bronze, 58 x 109 cm ## Commentary The Archbishop Bernward of Hildesheim commissioned these famous doors and also provided their iconographical theme - Sin and Redemption. The first doors cast in one piece \(in 1015\) in the West since Roman times, they rank as masterpieces of Ottonian art. The sculptor or sculptors seem to have worked from a painted model or to have been inspired by Carolingian miniatures. The background, conceived in a pictorial manner, provides a setting, its very low relief giving an illusion of space; the figures, on the other hand, are carved almost in the round, the upper parts of the bodies standing away from the background and the vigorous modelling accentuating the dramatic tension, so that the panel takes on the quality of full three-dimensional relief. ## Related artworks - [12 scenes from the Life of Christ]() - [A Bath-House]() - [A carpenter at work]() - [A Knight of the Rehlinger Family]() - [A Lady]() - [Adoration of the Magi]() - [Adoration of the Magi]() - [Adoration of the Magi]() - [Adoration of the Magi]() - [Adoration of the Shepherds]() - [Altarpiece of the Seven Joys of Mary]() - [Altarpiece of the Seven Joys of Mary]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()