Palms, Power, and Polished Metal

Medieval Door Knockers Up Close

Abstract

A point of perceptual interest and sensory interaction, figural door knockers offer a possibility for examining diverse notions of proximity and distance for medieval doors. The article approaches thresholds through door knockers, their functional, ecclesiastical, legal, pictorial, and material contexts. It analyses the historiated doors at San Zeno, Verona, with their door knockers surrounded by pictorial instances of healing and salvific as well as transgressive or illicit touch. A solitary door knocker in the Victoria and Albert Museum likewise offers a range of possible interpretations. These fittings, their images, visual echoes, and associations contribute to the threshold as a complex and contrastive space, entangling past and present.