Bernini's The Ecstasy Of St. Teresa

996 Words4 Pages
Another Bernini’s important work is The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. Unlike David which displays a man’s wrath and power towards an inhumane Giant, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa exhibits a woman’s intense sensation when face to a divine being. Bernini made The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa between 1647-1652, more than two decades after David. It shows the moment when St. Teresa felt the great love of god as she described in her biography. St. Teresa, a medieval nun, is lying there on clouds. She is about to break with gravity and levitates into the sky. She must undergo something extreme, but it is difficult to tell whether she is in pain or pleasure. Her eyes are half closed. Her head is thrown back. Her lips are slightly apart as if she is moaning.…show more content…
Teresa said: “I would see beside me, on my left hand, an angel in boily form…In his hands I saw a long golden spear and at the end of the iron tip I seemed to see a point of fire. With this he seemed to pierce my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he drew it out, I thought he was drawing them out with it and he left me completely afire with a great love of God. The pain was so sharp that caused me utter several moans; and so excessive was the sweetness will one’s soul be content with anything less than God.”(Avery, Charles. Bernini: Genius of Baroque. Boston : Little, Brown and Co. ,1997. Print.) I guess I realized what she mean by the love of God when I look at The Ecstasy of St. Teresa. It is a desirable feeling, but almost impossible to be describes in language. How lucky are we to have Bernini and his sculpture. Bernini made the impossible become possible and alleviated my struggle of can't find proper words. Bernini expressed not singly by the sculpture itself, but by a harmonious composition of three kinds of fine art: The sculpture, the painting and the
Show More
Related

  • The Ecstasy Of St. Teresa Analysis

    914 Words  | 4 Pages

    Teresa is a work that was based on and designed to demonstrate the “use [of] all of [her] senses to transport [herself] emotionally as [she] imagined the events on which [she was] meditating.” (Stokstad p. 713) In her case, she was not experiencing the wearing of the crown of thorns, but she did describe her experience in her autobiography The Life of Teresa of Jesus to say “he appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my

    Read More

More about Bernini's The Ecstasy Of St. Teresa

Open Document