century sculptor Giovanni da Bologna. Compare Bernini’s statue to Giovanni
da Bologna’s Rape of a Sabine Woman (c. 1579–1583), in which he created
this serpentine pose.
Another important commission from Scipione Borghese was Apollo and
Daphne (c. 1622–1625). In the Metamorphoses, Ovid relates, “as soon as
[Apollo] saw Daphne, he fell in love with her, and wanted to marry her,”
but at her pleading, Daphne’s father transformed her into a tree as she À ed
from Apollo. The tree was a laurel, and Apollo made it his symbol—thus,
the laurel wreath of victory. Bernini modeled Apollo partially after the
Apollo Belvedere.
Bernini received a commission for the Cornaro Chapel (c. 1645–1652) from
Cardinal Federigo Cornaro, a member of the Cornaro family from Venice.
The cardinal settled in Rome in 1644 and wanted a funerary chapel built
for him in the Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. The chapel
might never have been designed by Bernini, except that he had fallen from
favor when there was a change in popes. During the 1640s, Bernini took
on more private commissions, including the Cornaro Chapel. We look at
an 18th-century painting showing this chapel, of which the principal subject
is the ecstasy of St. Teresa. St. Teresa of Avila was a 16th-century Spanish
monastic reformer and mystic, an important Counter-Reformation ¿ gure and
founder of the Discalced Carmelite Order. After her canonization in 1622,
representations of her vision began to appear in churches of this order.
To create the chapel, the outer wall of the church was extended, since the
transept was so shallow. Part of the chapel lies outside the church’s exterior
wall, which allowed Bernini to introduce a separate light source from a
lantern, a covered opening on the projecting section outside. A projection
above the altar, similar to a stage, contains a marble group of St. Teresa and
an angel. It is lit from above with the natural light from the lantern, and light
spreads on the gilded “rays” above the group. The very top of this chapel has
a painted glory of angels adoring the Holy Spirit, designed but not painted
by Bernini.
In the lower level, below the cornices, is the Ecstasy of St. Teresa in the middle
and two side boxes. On the À anking walls of the chapel are two balconies