Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

Verrocchio’s Davids and is more emotionally charged even than

Michelangelo’s (FIG. 22-14). The tension in David’s face augments

the dramatic impact of Bernini’s sculpture.

ECSTASY OF SAINT TERESAAnother work that displays the

motion and emotion of Italian Baroque art and exemplifies Bernini’s

refusal to limit his statues to firmly defined spatial settings is Ecstasy

of Saint Teresa in the Cornaro Chapel (FIG. 24-1) of the Roman

church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. For this chapel, Bernini mar-

shaled the full capabilities of architecture, sculpture, and painting to

charge the entire area with palpable tension. He accomplished this by

drawing on the considerable knowledge of the theater he absorbed

from writing plays and producing stage designs. The marble sculp-

ture (FIG. 24-8) that serves as the chapel’s focus depicts Saint Teresa,

a nun of the Carmelite order and one of the great mystical saints of

the Spanish Counter-Reformation. Her conversion occurred after the

death of her father, when she fell into a series of trances, saw visions,

and heard voices. Feeling a persistent pain, she attributed it to the

fire-tipped arrow of divine love that an angel had thrust repeatedly

into her heart. In her writings, Saint Teresa described this experience

as making her swoon in delightful anguish. In Bernini’s hands, the

entire Cornaro Chapel became a theater for the production of this

mystical drama. The niche in which it takes place appears as a shallow

proscenium (the part of the stage in front of the curtain) crowned

with a broken Baroque pediment and ornamented with polychrome

marble. On either side of the chapel, sculpted portraits of the fam-

ily of Cardinal Federico Cornaro (1579–1673) watch the heavenly

drama unfold from choice balcony seats. Bernini depicted the saint in

ecstasy, unmistakably a mingling of spiritual and physical passion,

swooning back on a cloud, while the smiling angel aims his arrow.

The sculptor’s supreme technical virtuosity is evident in the visual

differentiation in texture among the clouds, rough monk’s cloth,

gauzy material, smooth flesh, and feathery wings—all carved from

the same white marble. Light from a hidden window of yellow glass

pours down on golden rays that suggest the radiance of Heaven,

whose painted representation covers the vault.

The passionate drama of Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresacor-

related with the ideas disseminated earlier by Ignatius Loyola

(1491–1556), who founded the Jesuit order in 1534 and whom the

Church canonized as Saint Ignatius in 1622. In his book Spiritual

Exercises,Ignatius argued that the re-creation of spiritual experiences

in artworks would do much to increase devotion and piety. Thus,

654 Chapter 24 ITALY AND SPAIN, 1600 TO 1700

24-8Gianlorenzo Bernini,Ecstasy of Saint Teresa,Cornaro Chapel,

Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, Italy, 1645–1652. Marble, height of

group 11 6 .

The passionate drama of Bernini’s depiction of Saint Teresa correlated

with the ideas of Ignatius Loyola, who argued that the re-creation of

spiritual experience would do much to increase devotion and piety.

24-9Francesco Borromini,facade of San Carlo alle Quattro

Fontane, Rome, Italy, 1665–1667.

Borromini rejected the traditional notion that a building’s facade should

be a flat frontispiece. He set San Carlo’s facade in undulating motion,

creating a dynamic counterpoint of concave and convex elements.

1 ft.