ABSTRACT
Gianlorenzo Bernini’s 1647–52 Ecstasy of Saint Teresa was once considered the embodiment of Counter-Reformation art in that it encapsulated key stylistic and thematic elements associated with art of the Counter-Reformation era. The multimedia work by Bernini (1598–1660) is located in the Cornaro Chapel in the Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome (Fig. 20.1). Like most Counter-Reformation artworks, it was commissioned to promote a particular Catholic doctrine or set of beliefs. In this case, Bernini depicts the moment of the Carmelite saint Teresa of Avila’s transverberation (piercing of the heart by the arrow of Divine Love). At the time of the commission, Teresa was not one of the most revered saints in Rome; the erection of the altarpiece was part of a larger campaign to bring attention to Teresa’s visionary experiences, of which she had written extensively. As the angel pierces the heart of Teresa, her head falls back, her lips part, and her eyes flutter closed in an expression of her ecstasy. Bernini uses frenetic drapery to express outwardly Teresa’s inner mental state. While Protestants emphasized personal devotion rather than outward shows of faith, Bernini’s work fitted into a larger Catholic trend to depict ecstatic saints. The genre of ecstatic saints allowed artists to translate inner devotion to dramatic outward manifestations of faith.
