STEVEN ZUCKER: Not all artists who
produce religious work are themselves religious.
But an exception to that was Bernini.
BETH HARRIS: Bernini was deeply religious,
but he was also especially interested in the theater.
He did set designs, he wrote plays,
and he brought together his deep religious faith
and his interest in theater here in this great masterpiece,
"The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa."
STEVEN ZUCKER: Within the Cornaro Chapel.
Within the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria
It's important to think about this sculpture
with the architecture, because Bernini
was both a sculptor and an architect.
BETH HARRIS: And you could say he brought together
not only sculpture and architecture here but also
painting, because he's using colored marble.
STEVEN ZUCKER: There's also fresco up
on the ceiling and the stained glass, and you've got gilding.
And so it really is an entire installation piece.
BETH HARRIS: He used whatever means
he could to do what all Baroque art tried to do,
and that is to involve the viewer to inspire faith.
STEVEN ZUCKER: And to inspire faith again in the miraculous.
And that's precisely what this is about.
The subject matter is the ecstasy of Saint Teresa.
That is a woman who had recently been canonized,
been made a Saint, who is here having one of her not so
uncommon visions of an angel.
BETH HARRIS: That's right.
She was canonized in 1622, and she
wrote accounts of the visions that she had of angels.
I can read the one that Bernini used
for "The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa."
STEVEN ZUCKER: Please do.
BETH HARRIS: "Beside me on the left
appeared an angel in bodily form.
He was not tall, but short, and very beautiful.
And his face was so aflame that he
appeared to be one of the highest ranks of angels,
who seemed to be all on fire.
In his hands I saw a great, golden spear,
and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point to fire.
This he plunged into my heart several times
so that it penetrated to my entrails.
When he pulled it out, I felt that he took them with it
and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God.
The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans.
The sweetness caused me by this intense pain is so extreme that
one cannot possibly wish it to cease.
Nor is one's soul content with anything but God.
This is not a physical but a spiritual pain,
though the body has some share in it, even
a considerable share."
STEVEN ZUCKER: That last line is especially important.
Both the text that you just read and Bernini's approach
used the physical body and a kind of sexual symbolism
to get at the spiritual experience.
BETH HARRIS: That's right.
To represent it for us we need to understand Saint Teresa's
spiritual visions by means of a metaphor.
And that's all we have.
We don't have visions, you and I. Most people don't.
But Saint Teresa was blessed.
The only way that Bernini and Saint
Teresa herself could explain that to us
was by a metaphor involving the body.
This made her moan.
This was a physical experience.
STEVEN ZUCKER: And so Bernini has translated
that relationship between the physical and the spiritual
into stone.
And if we look, for instance, at the two figures
we see this gorgeous angel who's plunging that arrow that she
spoke of with its iron tip, pointing it right at her.
And you can see her body writhing under the heavy cloth.
BETH HARRIS: He has this very sweet, angelic smile
on his face.
His body is very graceful.
There's such a difference in that gauze fabric he wears.
STEVEN ZUCKER: Well, look at the way
the wind seems to whip it around his body,
creating this fabulous torsion in such contrast
to the heavy quality of the cloth that she wears.
She is of the Earth.
He is of the heavens.
BETH HARRIS: And that also in contrast to the feathers
that we can almost feel in his wings.
Bernini is using marble, the same substance for all
of these, but making them seem such different textures.
STEVEN ZUCKER: Well, it's almost impossible
to remember this is marble, in fact.
BETH HARRIS: Especially because the whole thing
seems to float in midair.
STEVEN ZUCKER: Well, he's done that
by supporting it from quite a deep recess
so that everything underneath is in shadow,
and the miraculous is expressed.
You know, this is the Counter Reformation.
This is a moment when Protestants in the north
are revolting against the Catholics,
and are saying that the pomp and the ceremony
of the Catholic tradition is not necessary.
It gets in the way.
BETH HARRIS: The Protestants said
that we should have a personal relationship with God, that we
didn't need all that ceremony of the church.
STEVEN ZUCKER: And what Bernini is doing here very cleverly
is in fact using all that pomp and ceremony, all
the fabulous gold, all of the marble
here to express a direct relationship
between an individual and the spiritual realm.
BETH HARRIS: Giving us a kind of dramatic access to that.
And the main thing that Baroque art always does
is it involves the viewer, and here Bernini
does that in a number of ways.
He's not just thinking about the sculpture of Saint Teresa
and the angel, but about the whole space of the chapel,
because on either side we see relief sculptures
of figures that look like they're in theater boxes,
as though we were part of an audience.
So we become immediately part of the work of art.
STEVEN ZUCKER: Look at the way that the broken pediment,
this sort of proscenium, this stage-like space
literally seems to open up as if the marble is moving
to reveal this very intimate image,
and to give us a sense of the specialness of our vantage
point.
But the figures on the upper left and the upper right
are very curious.
They are like us in that they are seeing this sacred event.
But they're not like us because they
are the patron and the family of the patrons.
This is the Cornaro Chapel.
And Frederico Cornaro was a cardinal in Venice,
but had important ties to Rome.
BETH HARRIS: So we have Teresa and the angel
on a cloud appearing to float in the air
with rays of gold that seem to be mysteriously
illuminated from above.
STEVEN ZUCKER: Well, we're in the church looking
at the chapel in the late afternoon in the summer,
and the light does seem to be miraculously pouring
down on these figures from above.
And if we look way up we can see that this fresco
on the ceiling of the chapel that
shows the Holy Spirit, a white dove, and light
is emanating from that.
And it almost seems as if the light that's pouring down
on these two figures is coming from the Holy Spirit.
But Bernini, remember, is a dramatist,
and remember, is a stage craftsman.
And he's using all of his tricks to make this happen.
BETH HARRIS: And so the trick in this case
is that there's a window hidden behind that broken pediment
that shines light through and then down onto the sculpture.
So Bernini's doing everything he can
to make us walk up to this chapel and go [GASP]
and feel this moment, this spiritual vision,
in our bodies.
You often think about how Baroque art appeals
to our senses in a way that's so different
from the high Renaissance and its appeal
to the rational mind.
STEVEN ZUCKER: This is not at all about the rational.
This is about change.
It's about metamorphosis.
It's about spiritual awakening.
And it is incredibly powerful emotionally.
BETH HARRIS: It's about that union
of our world with the spiritual.