Ecstasy of St Theresa
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The Ecstasy of St Theresa (alternatively St. Teresa in Ecstasy or Transverberation of St. Teresa) is the central marble group of a sculpture complex designed and competed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for the Cornaro Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. It is considered one of the sculptural masterpieces of High Roman Baroque.
The entire ensemble was overseen and completed by a mature Bernini during the Pamphilj papacy of Innocent X. During this time, the sculptor's past involvement with the profligate expenses of the prior Barberini papacy had disgraced Bernini and deprived him of much Vatican patronage. Bernini was thus available to the Venetian Cardinal Federico Cornaro (1579-1673), who had chosen the otherwise non-descript church of the Discalced Carmelites for his burial chapel. He had reason to avoid burial in Venice, since his appointment as a cardinal by Urban VIII (Barberini) while his father Giovanni was Doge had created a mild furor in his home-city, which banned families from holding these two positions simultaneously The chapel chosen had previously depicted St. Paul in ecstasy, and the Cardinal replaced it with the ecstatic event undergone by the first Carmelite saint, recently canonized in 1622.[1]
It was completed in 1652 for the then exorbitant sum of 12,000 scudi (c. $120,000).[2]
The chapel is an explosion of colored marble, metal, and detail. Light filters though a window above Teresa, underscored by gilded rays. The dome is frescoed with the illusionistic cherub-filled sky with the descending light of the Holy Ghost allegorized as a dove. On the side walls, are life-size reliefs of the Cornaro family.
The two focal sculptural figures derive from an episode described by Teresa of Avila in her autobiography, The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (1515-1582), a mystical cloistered Discalced Carmelite reformer and nun. The chapter describes divine visions, including one where she saw a young, beautiful, and lambent angel standing aside her body:
I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.
– [3]
[edit] Critical assessment
Some modern critics have derided the semi-syncopal religious experiences as veiled orgasmic phenomena rather than spiritual encounters; in particular, the body posture and facial expression of St. Teresa have caused some to assign her experience as one of climactic moment.[4]
Titillating as such a theory may be, most serious Baroque scholars doubt that Bernini, a follower of the mystical exercises of followers of St. Ignatius of Loyola, would have intended to depict here an episode of lust fulfilled [5]. Instead, Bernini aims to express the facial and body equivalents to a state of divine joy, and the results are a transfiguring coma, the so-called Sleep of God, common to the mystics. It would have not been unusual for devout daily church-goers like Bernini to spend hours at prayer each day. Mystics like Theresa would pray for days, often unfed, to achieve such visions. The expression here is more like that of the joy of heavenly encounter found in Bernini's Blessed Ludovica Albertoni in her deathbed.
This scenographic chapel unites lifelong themes for Bernini. True to Baroque sentiment, it illustrates a moment where divinity intrudes on an earthly body. Irving Lavin said the transverberation becomes a point of contact between earth and heaven, between matter and spirit.[6] But the ironic dichotomy contained inside the conceit in this artwork echoes futher in conjoining joy and pain in Teresa's expression and the conjunction of gilded rays with rippled stone.
The unity of architecture, theater, and sculpture found in this complex is also a baroque feature, with the Holy Ghost as light bathing or guided by the gilded rays framing the stature from windows atop the chapel, allowing the sky to enter church.
The effects are theatrical, including the discourse the saint renders among the flanking Cornaro pedigree.[7] The cherubic details around Teresa may repel a secular minimalist, yet they add to the notion that we are seeing a moment of time where God has intruded into one woman's soul, if not pierced her literal body.
Furthering the dynamics, Bernini has untamed stone into ripples of fabric, evoking of the spiritual earthquake enveloping Teresa, and defiling the immaculate petrous conception of the virgin marble. A divine wind ripples the angel's gown. The angel grins almost with mischief. The unpolished cloud looks superfluous; Teresa's gown would appear to suffice in her levitation, if not wreak on observers the undertowing swoon of Stendhal syndrome.
[edit] Similar works by Bernini
- See also entry titled Bernini's Cornaro chapel: the complete work of art found in the Baroque section.
- Death of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni (1671-74) - San Francesco a Ripa, Rome.
- Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence (1614-15)[8]
- Truth Unveiled by Time (1646-52) - Galleria Borghese, Rome.[9]
[edit] Works influencing or influenced by this sculpture
- Stefano Maderno's sculpture of St Cecilia in namesake church (1600).
- Melchiorre Caffà's Ste Rose of Lima (1665) and his Assumption of St Catherine.
- Francisco Aprile and Ercole Ferrata's Sant'Anastasia in her namesake church in Rome.
- Angels and Demons, the bestselling novel by Dan Brown which lists the sculpture as the third altar of science of the Illuminati
- The sculpture is the subject of the song The Lie from the Peter Hammill album The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage
[edit] Sources
- Howard Hibbard, Bernini.
- Robert Harbison (2000). "The Case for Disruption", Reflections on Baroque. The University of Chicago Press, 1-32.
- Bruce Boucher (1998). in Thames & Hudson, World of Art: Italian Baroque Sculpture, 134-143.
- Bernini biography (click on "Ecstasy of St. Theresa")
- image of sculpture
