In the article, “Bernward and Eve at Hildesheim” written by Adam S. Cohen and Anne Derbes, they describe the images on the panels of the bronze doors of Hildesheim. They talk about the Fall and Redemption of humanity centering around Eve and Mary. Along with the Bishop Bernward and his struggle against Sophia the abbess of Gandersheim. Cohen and Derbes’s thesis is that the bronze doors present the Fall as a sexually charged encounter with presenting Eve as the main person to blame.
They first start by talking about the design of the bronze doors. They mention that the doors may have been overseen and designed by Bishop Bernward because of his artistic skills. Along with mentioning that during the time the doors were being created, that he was locked in a struggle with Sophia, the abbess of Gandersheim. He was trying to gain control from her over Gandersheim. He related her to Eve to ruin her reputation. In the end he did gain control over Gandersheim. Cohen and Derbes believe that his life events effected the art expressed on the bronze doors, changing the images to represent a different look on what happened. In his
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Each of them presented the subject as unbashful about themselves. Possibly even proud of what they got to show. The images on the doors represent sexuality as shameful, even immoral. The fact that the bronze doors of Hildesheim are a religious work of art may be the majority of the reason why Eve’s sexuality is represented as bad, possibly evil.
The sculptures that were created of nude subjects were some of religious reason. Romans created their sculptures of their gods as nude in an ideal shape of beauty for Roman men and women. Though Aphrodite was the first sculpted nude woman or god to be created in the Roman era. It must be the content of which the images on the bronze doors are based on that encourages the craftsman to feature sexuality as wrong and