Although the figures are executed in white marble, the aedicule, wall panels and theatre boxes are made from coloured marbles. Cardinal Federico Cornaro and Doge Giovanni I Cornaro, are present and shown discussing the event in boxes as if at the theatre. Other witnesses appear on the side walls life-size high-relief donor portraits of male members of the Cornaro family, e.g. Teresa is shown lying on a cloud indicating that this is intended to be a divine apparition we are witnessing. The group is illuminated by natural light which filters through a hidden window in the dome of the surrounding aedicule, and underscored by gilded stucco rays. 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. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual though the body has its share in it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than 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. 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. I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. Her experience of religious ecstasy in her encounter with the angel is described as follows: The two central sculptural figures of the swooning nun and the angel with the spear derive from an episode described by Teresa of Avila, a mystical cloistered Discalced Carmelite reformer and nun, in her autobiography, The Life of Teresa of Jesus (1515–1582). Sculptural group and its setting Wider view, including the Cornaro portraits, but omitting the lower parts of the chapel The model belongs to the Hermitage Museum's collection. The sculpture represents the first embodiment of the project, with traces of Bernini's fingerprints still visible. Ī small format terracotta model of about 47 cm (19 in) was created between 16. It was completed in 1652 for the then princely sum of 12,000 scudi. Paul in Ecstasy', which was replaced by Bernini's dramatization of a religious experience undergone and related by the first Discalced Carmelite saint, who had been canonised not long before, in 1622. The selected site for the chapel was the left transept that had previously held an image of 'St. Without papal patronage, the services of Bernini's studio were therefore available to a patron such as the Venetian Cardinal Federico Cornaro (1579–1653).Ĭornaro had chosen the hitherto unremarkable church of the Discalced Carmelites for his burial chapel. When Innocent acceded to the papal throne, he shunned Bernini's artistic services the sculptor had been the favourite artist of the previous and profligate Barberini pope, Urban VIII. The entire ensemble was overseen and completed by a mature Bernini during the Pamphili papacy of Innocent X. The sculpture depicts Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish Carmelite nun and saint, swooning in a state of religious ecstasy, while an angel holding a spear stands over her. It is generally considered to be one of the sculptural masterpieces of the High Roman Baroque. It was designed and completed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the leading sculptor of his day, who also designed the setting of the Chapel in marble, stucco and paint. The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (also known as Saint Teresa in Ecstasy or the Transverberation of Saint Teresa Italian: L'Estasi di Santa Teresa or Santa Teresa in estasi) is a sculptural group in white marble set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.
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