In the fair city of Ghent, all the historic doors of St. Bavo’s Cathedral, home to the Ghent Altarpiece and visited annually by over a million tourists, have been restored and put back in place. A specialised team replaced the damaged sections of the doors and repaired worn parts. The front doors have been repainted red, while the other solid oak doors were given a coat of varnish.
Religion & Philosophy
St Bavo’s Cathedral’s centuries-old doors leading to the Van Eycks’ Adoration of the Mystic Lamb ready just in time for Holy Week
Colin Clapson
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Earlier this year, the company Arthur Vandendorpe dismantled all the doors at St Bavo’s Cathedral, a Roman Catholic place of worship in Gothic style, work on which started in Ghent in the 1270s. The doors were in urgent need of repair, being at least 3 to 4 centuries old. Some parts were rotten and the hinges had rusted. Over the past few months, the doors were treated in a specialised workshop in West Flanders Province.
The company has now replaced the renovated doors. This will ensure that all 10 entrances will be in fine nick for hundreds of years to come. “We’ve repaired the hinges and locks. The damaged wood has been restored using traditional methods. We’ve followed the grain of the oak so that the wood grain matches,” explains Luc Dewulf.
“The door used during the ‘Just Judges’ theft has also been restored”
“We set aside a whole day for the installation,” says a worker. “We now have to fit the doors properly again so they work and close perfectly. Incidentally, this door was once used to steal the missing panel from the Ghent Altarpiece, the 'Just Judges'. So it’s even more special than the others,” he laughs.
The 'Just Judges' (or Righteous Judges) form the lower-left panel of the Ghent Altarpiece. The panel was stolen from St Bavo's Cathedral in 1934, never recovered, and replaced with a copy by Jef Van der Veken in 1939. The original remains a famous unsolved mystery in Flanders and an iconic stolen masterpiece.
If you look closely, the doors look a little different. “The front doors were restored to their original red colour, as revealed by historical research. We treated, sandblasted, and re-stained the other doors. We also applied a darker varnish, in accordance with research. It was very meticulous work,” Dewulf concludes.
Flanders’ cathedral doors with the biggest footfall
The renovated doors were installed just in time for Holy Week, leading up to the Christian feast of Easter, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the first century Jewish teacher and religious leader, who is the central figure of Christianity, three days after his crucifixion. It marks the joyful end of the 40-day Lenten fasting season and initiates a 50-day period known as Eastertide, culminating in the feast of Pentecost. Along with Christmas, an annual festival celebrated on December 25th, commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, believed by Christians to be the Son of God, this is the most important period in the Roman Catholic calendar. The cathedral attracts a particularly large number of worshippers during the Easter celebrations.
The cathedral, a protected monument, welcomes immense numbers of visitors outside of these holidays too, largely because it houses the world-famous masterpiece, the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb or Ghent altarpiece, by the brothers Jan and Hubert Van Eyck, completed in 1432. Last year, there were 1.4 million visitors. The restored cathedral doors are thus the most widely used in Flanders.