foreign not all artists that produce religious work are themselves religious but an exception to that was Bernini Bernini was deeply religious but he was also especially interested in the theater he did said designs he wrote plays and he brought together his religious faith and his interest in theater and the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa within the coronaro chapel in the Church of Santa Maria de la Victoria it's important to think about the sculpture with the architecture because Bernini was both a sculptor and an architect and he brought together not only sculpture and architecture but also painting does rest go up on the ceiling and the stained glass and gilding it really is an entire installation piece he used whatever means he could to involve the viewer and to inspire faith in the miraculous and that's precisely what this is about the subject matter is the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa a woman who had recently been made a saint who is here having one of her not so uncommon visions of an Angel 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 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 of 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 by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease nor is one 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 that last line is especially important both the text that you just read and bernini's approach use the physical body and sexual symbolism to get at the spiritual experience we don't have visions you and I most people don't but Saint Teresa was blessed we need to understand Saint Teresa's spiritual visions by means of a metaphor involving the body this made her moan this was a physical experience Bernini has translated that relationship between the physical and the spiritual into stone 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 he has this sweet Angelic smile on his face his body is graceful there's such a difference in that gauze fabric that he wears 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 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 such different textures well it's almost impossible to remember this is marble the whole thing seems to float in midair he's done that by supporting it from quite a deep recess so that everything underneath is in Shadow and the miraculous is expressed this is the Reformation this is a moment when Protestants in the north are revolting against the Catholics the Protestant said that we should have a personal relationship with God that we didn't need all that ceremony of the church and what Bernini is doing here cleverly is using all that Pomp and ceremony all the fabulous gold all of the marble to express a direct relationship between an individual and the spiritual realm the main thing that baroque art 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 a part of the work of art look at the way that the broken pediment this stage like space seems to open up as if the marble is moving to reveal this intimate image and to give us a sense of the specialness of our vantage point the figures on the upper left and the upper right are curious they are like us seeing this event but they're not like us because they are the patron and the family of the patrons this is the coronaro chapel Frederico Corner was a cardinal in Venice but had important ties to Rome so we have Teresa and the angel on a cloud appearing to float in the air with Rays of gold that seemed to be mysteriously illuminated 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 seems as if the light that's pouring down on these two figures is coming from the Holy Spirit but Bernini is a dramatist and is a stage Craftsman he's using all his tricks to make this happen and so the trick in this case is that there's a window hidden behind that broke impediment that shines light through and then down onto the sculpture bernini's doing everything he can to make us feel this moment this spiritual vision in our bodies you often think about how baroque art appeals to our senses this is about changes about metamorphosis it's about Spiritual Awakening and it is incredibly powerful emotionally it's about that Union of our world with the spiritual [Music]