121Multiple Authorship and Diachronic Hybridity
Andrea Worm · 2025
This chapter is a case study on the seven-branched candelabrum Brunswick Cathedral Seven-branched candelabrum in Brunswick Cathedral from 1170/1180, one of the largest surviving medieval bronze objects. This famous artefact, however, is of a hybrid nature: it owes significant parts to a 19 th -century restoration and thus reflects, as is demonstrated here, the artistic ideas and (political) intentions of both medieval and modern actors. In the 12 th century, the candelabrum linked the church allegorically to the Tabernacle and the Templum Salomonis. It lent splendour to the liturgy of high feast days and to the memoria of Duke Henry the Lion Henry the Lion (Duke of Bavaria and Saxony) (d. 1195), at whose tomb Brunswick Cathedral Tomb of Henry the Lion it was originally placed. After the candelabrum had been dismantled and removed in 1728, it was put back up in the 19 th century, when it came to be regarded as a monument to the (national) past. In 1895, the lost parts of its base were recreated by Friedrich Küsthardt Küsthardt , Friedrich , while the church interior was refashioned in a neo-Romanesque style. The analysis of both the candelabrum’s stages on equal terms reveals how the concept of multiple authorship (both synchronic and diachronic) can lead to a more profound understanding of hybrid artefacts within their respective artistic and historical contexts.