DOOR (AS. dor, Cbsth. dati•, 011C. tor, net. Thor: connected with Lat. furls. (;1;. el pa. Ir., (1ael. &wits. ()Church Slay. driri. 1.ilh, Lett. duririR, _kv„ dram, Ski. dear, The movable patrol opening to a build ing. an apartment, eloset. or passage is closed. Doors are made of wood, iron, bronze, or stone. The earliest doors appear to have strung. not on hinges. hut in sockets; at least, some es Iremely early marble sockets have been found in Babylonia, front the fourth and fifth milennitun‘ u.r., several at Sirpurla (Tc1101. What the style of the beautiful palace and temple doors of Babylonia and Assyria was call be judged not only from the descriptions in the historic lions, but front the doors themselves. found at Balawrit, which were decorated with bronze strips eovereil with reliefs of figured bislorip seines. Other doors were inlaid with bone or ivory and overlaid with plaques of gold or silver. The antique tie of the Pantheon are famous. From Roman times bronze seems to have been the fa vorite material for doors, on a wooden frame. But they were also elaborately inlaid under the Empire. The Byzantine method of making whole bronze doors inlaid with niello enamel and silver was probably a Roman survi val. The doors of Saint Sophia (now at Saint _dark's, Venice) . of Saint Paul's at Rome. of Sant' Angelo at Monte Gargano. and several others in South Italy. are examples of this technique. An other method was of hammering out thin bronze plaques, which were nailed together: of this primitive type are the gates of San Zeno, Verona. But soon bronze casting was revived in France, Germany, and Italy, and used for doors, as at Iffildesheim, Augsburg (cathedral), Pisa (eathe drat), Ravello (cathedral), and Monreale. Each
of these doors was a mass of figured compositions in relief. The climax of doors of east bronze was readied between the beginning of the four teenth and the close of the sixteenth century in a series extending from the gate of Andrea Pi san() at the baptistery of Florence, through the Gliiherti gates. those of Luca della Rohlda (Flor ence cathedral), of Pollaiuolo (Saint Peter's), and finally those by Giovanni Bologna and his contemporaries at Loreto and elsewhere. which show the decadence of art.
Meanwhile doors merely of wood remained popular. and were often richly carved, hut the perishable nature of the material has not allowed many early examples to survive. The earliest are the early Christian doors at Santa Sabine, Rome. whose reliefs of the Old and New Testa ment are among the finest works of the age. Those at the monastery of Greottafera Li represent Byzantine art (eleventh century). It bee:tine the custom during the gothic period to make the lee oration of the wooden doors consist largely of the wrought-iron hinges, which were expanded into a maze of intricate ornamentation. The doors of Notre Dame, Paris, dating from the thirteenth century, are the finest of their class. The Renaissance of the North, in Germany and France, reverted often to elaborately carved doors, which are among the most beautiful prod nets of wood-s•ulpture. Such were the doors of Beauvais Cathedral by -Jean le Pot and those of Saint Maclon at Rouen by Jean Goujon. Doors made entirely of marble_ are very few and com parativel• modern. For illustration of bronze doors, see