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.