Ecstasy of St Teresa
Gianlorenzo Bernini, 1647-1652
BaroqueReligious SculptureItalian Artists
Overview
About This Work
Designed and executed between 1647 and 1652, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (Italian: L'Estasi di Santa Teresa) is a monumental sculptural ensemble in white Carrara marble, standing approximately 3.5 metres in height, located in the Cornaro Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. The work depicts the celebrated mystical vision of Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), the Spanish Carmelite nun and reformer, at the precise moment of her transverberation—the piercing of her heart by a golden spear wielded by a small, beautiful angel. Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), the preeminent sculptor and architect of the Roman Baroque, conceived not merely an isolated sculpture but an unprecedented gesamtwerk, or total work of art, in which architecture, sculpture, painting, coloured marble, gilt bronze, and natural light converge into a single unified expressive vehicle. The commission by Venetian Cardinal Federico Cornaro (1579–1653), who chose the Carmelite church as his burial chapel, coincided with Bernini's temporary exclusion from papal patronage under Innocent X—a circumstance that freed the master sculptor's genius to create what many scholars regard as the quintessential masterpiece of Roman Baroque religious art. The work stands as an apex of Counter-Reformation theology made visible: a radical assertion that mystical ecstasy—the direct, unmediated experience of divine love—is not a suspect or heretical phenomenon but rather the highest achievement of Catholic spiritual life, accessible to (and particularly manifest in) women.
Visual Analysis
Composition
The Aedicule and Elevation: The marble figures occupy an elevated niche (aedicule) bordered by columns of blue marble and surmounted by a broken convex tympanum—a frame that architecturally isolates the supernatural event from the viewer's spatial reality. This vertical elevation accomplishes a sophisticated theological gesture: the vision is simultaneously present and transcendent, happening before the viewer yet in a separate ontological realm. The sculpture group appears to float on a thick marble cloud, rendered with such delicate undercutting that the stone achieves an ethereal weightlessness belying the material's actual density.
The S-Curve and Gravitational Dissolution: Teresa's body forms a pronounced, unstable S-curve, her head thrown dramatically backward, eyes half-closed in rapture. Most critically, the figure lacks a clear centre of gravity—the viewer cannot locate a stable anchor point from which the body "hangs." This compositional strategy enacts what the term ecstasy itself literally denotes: Greek ekstasis, "standing outside oneself." Bernini translates the mystical concept into formal language: the body, suspended and dissolved into drapery, has externalized itself from stable material existence.
The Angel's Gesture: Above Teresa hovers a small, cupid-like angel with a serene smile, holding a delicate golden spear. The angel's robes are depicted flowing backward, their folds trailing upward—a visual cue that the arrow has already been withdrawn. Bernini does not depict the moment of piercing but rather its aftermath—Teresa now "beyond herself," burning in the ecstatic consequences of the transverberation.
Colour & Light
The Polychromatic Envelope: Contrary to Renaissance white marble purity, Bernini clad the chapel in seventeen types of coloured marble, many quarried from ancient Roman ruins. The predominant palette employs warm breccias—reds and yellows—creating an iridescent, almost glowing surround for the white sculptural group. This deliberate chromatic strategy means the white marble figures do not read as pure and transcendent but rather as luminous focal points emerging from warmth and material richness.
The Theatrical Window: Behind the aedicule's pediment, hidden from direct view, a window admits natural light from outside. This light is then captured, refracted, and directed downward through a sculptural system of gilt bronze rays arranged in a triangular formation (symbolizing the Trinity). The effect is of heavenly radiance descending upon the figures. Critically, this illumination is not static but perpetually changing as the sun moves; Bernini employs light itself as a temporal component, making the vision's transience palpable.
Rudolf Wittkower observed that this directional light "seems fleeting, transient, impermanent. Impermanence is its very essence," which "supports the beholder's sensation of the transience of the scene represented." The ceiling's painted stucco clouds by Guido Ubaldo Abbatini deliberately overflow beyond the architectural framing, visually suggesting the heavens have "broken open" above the scene.
Materials & Technique
The Marble Carving Revolution: The angel and Teresa are carved from a single block of Carrara marble—a technical feat of extraordinary difficulty. What distinguishes Bernini's approach from Renaissance sculptural idealization is his refusal to impose classical restraint. The folds do not cascade in ordered channels but instead writhe and billow, creating deep shadow recesses through subtle undercutting. The flesh tones of face and hands are rendered with smooth, imperceptible transitions—sfumato translated into stone—while the drapery retains a rough, tactile texture.
The "Living Marble" Technique: Contemporary critics attacked Bernini for betraying the integrity of stone by imitating flesh and fabric too literally. However, this critique misses Bernini's theological intent: the marble's apparent "failure" to remain stone is actually its triumph. By rendering marble as if it were fluid, weightless, and quasi-immaterial, Bernini transforms the sculpture into a meditation on the boundary between matter and spirit.
The Architectural Frame as Sculptural Element: The aedicule's columns, the gilded rays, the fresco clouds above—these are not merely backdrop but integral to the work's meaning. Bernini's conception of art as un bel composto (a beautiful whole) means that every element, regardless of medium, contributes to a unified expressive purpose.
Historical Context
Context
The Artist: Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) was, by universal consent of his era, the greatest sculptor and architect of the age. He had been the favoured artist of Pope Urban VIII, receiving commissions for the Baldacchino in St. Peter's and numerous other papal projects. However, upon Innocent X's accession to the papacy in 1644, Bernini fell from official favour due to political shifts. This apparent setback paradoxically liberated Bernini to work for private patrons, producing perhaps his supreme masterpiece.
The Patronage: Cardinal Federico Cornaro (1579–1653), a Venetian nobleman and patriarch, obtained the chapel concession on 22 January 1647. Cornaro commissioned the ensemble as his family burial chapel in the left transept of the Carmelite Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria.
The Counter-Reformation Context: The Council of Trent (1545–1563) had mandated that religious art be "clear, realistic, and emotionally stimulating" to inspire devotion. Baroque art, with its emphasis on sensuality, movement, drama, and emotional immediacy, became the Counter-Reformation's preferred aesthetic vehicle.
The Biographical Teresa: Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) entered the Carmelite order at twenty-one. Her monastic life was marked by extraordinary mystical visions. The transverberation—the vision of the angel piercing her heart—is arguably the most famous mystical experience in Western Christianity, described by Teresa herself: "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."
Key Themes
Connection to Baroque
Exam Focus Points
Critical Perspectives
The Sensuality Controversy: From the moment of the chapel's inauguration in 1652, critics have debated the apparent eroticism of Bernini's representation. Yet twentieth-century scholarship has recognized that this apparent "problem" is actually the work's conceptual centre. Irving Lavin wrote: "Whether or not Teresa was hysterical or Bernini vulgar, the group evinces a physical eroticism that well-meaning apologists do wrong to deny." The key interpretive move is recognizing that Bernini does not apologize for or conceal the erotic dimension but rather integrates it into a coherent theological vision.
The Lacan Psychoanalytic Misreading: French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1972) famously declared Teresa was experiencing jouissance—excessive, inarticulate feminine pleasure. However, feminist theologian Grace Jantzen has powerfully critiqued this reading, arguing that Lacan's "voyeuristic gaze" ignores the public, institutional, transformative nature of Teresa's actual mystical experience.
The Material Integrity Debate: Classical art theorists objected that Bernini's imitation of flesh and fabric betrayed stone's essential nature. Bernini's "unfaithfulness" to marble's material qualities is actually a philosophical position: by transforming stone into apparent flesh and fire, he makes visible the theological claim that matter itself can be transformed through divine encounter.