Author: unknown
Date: 13th century
Technique: carving
Material: Dolomite stone
Size:
Conservation: end of the 19th century
Every day we enter and exit through countless doors. Some doors are open to us, others are closed. The door has a great practical and a deep symbolic meaning. The door opens, closes, and connects. The church door has its own story. They separate the sacred space from the profane, the sacred from the mundane. The sacred space helps one to leave one’s daily worries behind the walls of the church, to surrender to God’s prayer and reflection on the great challenges of life.
In the New Testament (Jn. 10: 9) we can read the words of Jesus Christ: “I AM the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture” Christ is the door through which man comes into contact with God and experiences revival.
The north portal of the Riga Cathedral, called “a brilliant jewel”, is carved from dolomite and stands out with its old age and high quality artistic solution. It belongs to the oldest and most outstanding examples of 13th century Christian art in the Baltic Sea region. The oblique construction of the portal immured in the wall emphasises perspectival depth corresponding to the late Romanesque style. The portal consists of rhythmically alternating semi-columns and pillars topped by a continuous band of capitals with the right side differing from the left. Such practice was common in medieval art and sometimes ascribed a symbolic meaning that emphasises the pair of opposites of good and evil. The Riga Cahtedrals capitals are ornamented with tendrils and leaves. To the right, a human face, dragons or bird-like creatures appear among floral elements; to the left, rhythmic tendril garlands predominate. The pointed arch above the portal is made of profiled archivolts and a trefoil in the door opening zone, topped by a lily motif. The issue of the portal’s colours is still unresolved. The rather faded polychromy seen today comes from the reconstruction period in the late 19th – early 20th century.
