The bronze entrance portal, designed by the French sculptor with Polish roots Paul Landowski and adorning the building of the former New Medical School (now Université Paris Descartes) at 26 rue des Saints-Pères, was made using an ancient technique for lost wax, forgotten, rediscovered and popularised at the end of the 19th century. The creation of the work, which measures an impressive 6.8 x 3.4 metres, posed a design and execution challenge. The sculpture was 15 years in the making, starting in 1938 with a team of artists.

History of the creation of the object

In 1938, Paul Landowski was commissioned by the rector of the New Medical School in Paris to design the entrance portal to the university building. The commission was also to include the choice of iconography and the supervision of the creation of 45 stone medallions adorning the facade of the edifice. It was left up to the artist to choose the sculptors responsible for realising the medallions and casting the doors. Landowski invited numerous artists such as Alphonse Terroir, Evariste Jonchère, Karl-Jean Longuet, Marcel Gaumont, Louis Lejeune, Lucien Brasseur, Félix Joffre, Alfred Muller, Carlo Sarrabezolles, Henri Lagriffoul, Zilch de Reichenstein, Ulysse Gemignani and Léon-Georges Baudry.

On 11 April 1938, the iconographic programme proposed by Landowsky was approved, and on 17 May the rector gave detailed guidelines to the individual artists. On 24 August, the contract with Landowski was signed. By the outbreak of the Second World War, only a third of the envisaged composition had been completed. The war effort halted work until January 1950.A few weeks after returning to the project, Landowski noted in his diary: "What luck to have such a subject for one of my last works, a bronze door" (entry dated 1 May 1950).

The project was created in several stages, evidenced by the preparatory plaster studies for the door preserved in the collection of the Museum of the 1930s at the Espace Landowski in Boulogne-Billancourt: a plaster study with a composition with Asklepios; a plaster study of the door (a scaled-down version relative to the final realisation); and a patinated plaster model of the realisation (on a scale of 1:1).

The ceremonial unveiling of the completed bronze work took place on 3 December 1953.

Iconographic programme of the object

The door has two wings, containing three panels separated by friezes each, which are crowned by a tympanum. The object's iconographic programme illustrates the journey from the creation of mankind to the acquisition of knowledge. According to the principles of ancient Greek inscriptions, the viewer should read the programme from the bottom up, starting from left to right and then following from right to left.

The order of scenes (according to the suggested reading direction): The creation of life and Adam and Eve in hostile nature (on the lower panels); the curses of humans - from the expulsion from the Garden of Eden to the myth of Pandora (on the friezes); the first humans facing the mysteries of life and death (on the central panels); the mythological struggle between good and evil ending in the victory of good (on the friezes) and the triumphs of man, illustrated by the legends of Heracles, Jason and Prometheus (on the lower panels).

The door is crowned by a cuboidal relief depicting key episodes in the life of the Greco-Roman god of medicine Asklepios: the resurrection of the dead, the death of Asklepios by Zeus' lightning bolt (punished for trying to revive Orion against Hades' wishes), and the killing of the Cyclops by Apollo, Asklepios' father, in an act of revenge for killing his son and turning him into the constellation Serpentius. Central to the relief is a representation of Asklepios with his attributes - a staff and a serpent handing the god a healing herb - which are universal symbols of medicine.

Context of the realisation

The realisation draws on the ancient narrative frieze tradition popular in Upper Egyptian, Greco-Roman and Khmer art, among others. It combines elements taken from Ghiberti's Gate of Paradise in Florence with motifs familiar from Christian sacred art. An important point of reference for Landowski's work is the legendary, unfinished Gate of Hell by Auguste Rodin, to the realisation of which the artist devoted 37 years of his life until the end of his days.

The composition is a modified version of the design for the Door of Science, intended for Landowski's total, never realised Temple of Man project.