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The Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned by the Venetian Cardinal Federico Cornaro (1579–1653) to produce religious artworks in marble, stucco and paint for his burial chapel in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. The centrepiece of the chapel is a stunning marble sculpture representing the ecstasy of Saint Teresa, which is described as an emblematic work of the High Baroque style and arguably Bernini’s most famous artwork. 1 The subject is the Spanish Carmelite nun Saint Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), whose writings and bridal mysticism (the portrayal of communion with Jesus as a marriage) were famous across the Catholic world and who had been canonized in 1622. The sculpture represents her experience of religious ecstasy, as she had described it in her autobiography (Chapter XXIX; Part 17): ‘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’.
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