The Rapture, NSFW

Walked through a market on my way to Santa Maria Della Vittoria and noticed a heap of kitty coin purses. I’ve used one for years until it’s nearly as soft as tissue. The vendor asked 5 euros for one. To my own surprise, I successfully bartered the cost down to 3, mostly by shaking my head and starting to walk on. Yippee.
Further along my route, I passed a courtyard, which reminded me of all those southern roadside stands selling concrete garden tchotchkes. Alas, no way will I be toting any of this home in my luggage.I’ve been looking forward to visiting Santa Maria Della Vittoria, shrine to Bernini’s genius, since I knew I was coming back to Rome. Bernini threw everything he had at the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa; sculpture, stucco, gilding, stained glass, paint, and colored marble. He used every skill he’d acquired as a sculptor, architect, playwright, and dramatist. He put his knowledge of stagecraft in the service of spirituality, and his own professional redemption. This pulled him out of the scandal he was mired in, and put him back on top. **
In the center, a dimpled angel of great personal charm, aims his spear at the breast of the swooning mystic. The cloistered nun Teresa of Avila is in the throes of a mystical vision. Gold rays point to the pair who appear to float, and boxes on the walls on either side hold watchful, seated figures. One of them is the patron who paid for this, Federico Cornaro, Cardinal of Venice. I’m sure he appreciated the view.
Let’s pause to acknowledge Bernini was inspired by Teresa’s own account, though this is no middle-aged, visionary nun. He sculpted a woman of perfect beauty with heavy-lidded eyes and parted lips in a face even more glorious than the angel’s. That said, she wrote,“Very close to me… an angel appeared in human form… he was not tall… but very beautiful and his face was so aflame that he appeared like one of those superior angels who look as though they are completely on fire… In his hands I saw a large golden spear and at its iron tip there seemed to be a point of fire. I felt as if he plunged this into my heart several times so that it penetrated all the way to my entrails. When he drew it out he seemed to draw them out with it and left me totally inflamed with a great love for God. The pain was so severe that it made me moan several times. The sweetness of this intense pain is so extreme that there is no wanting it to end and the soul is satisfied with nothing less than God. The pain is not physical but spiritual even though the body has a share in it – in fact a large share in it.”
Bernini knocked it out of the park – the swooning saint in an orgasmic full body seizure of rapture, the dimpled angel delicately pulling aside her fluttering robe to better aim of his shaft, the avid male spectators, watching the writhing, moaning nun from both sides. All the while, light waxes and wanes through a hidden aperture in the wall of the church, spotlighting Teresa’s supreme moment. Bam!I hung around for over an hour. It was a cool blustery overcast morning, and the light was changeable.

[easy-image-collage id=3179]

Art historians and critics insist it could not possibly, conceivably be exactly what it looks like, a woman experiencing the cumulation of coitus. Oh no. Absolutely not. It’s a metaphor, a representation of purely spiritual bliss. Nothing earthy, nothing lubricious about it. No way in that era would anyone’s mind stray to carnal experience. Even though this woman’s face and body precisely, exactly mirrors wanton sexual bliss, they refuse to consider Bernini’s mind could have been on anything other than the purely ethereal love of God.
Fine, sure, whatever. I call bullshit. I say metaphor, schmetaphor. This is an accurate depiction of female erotic rapture.
You disagree? Tant pis. I’m in accord with French aristocrat and wit Chevalier de Brosses, who commented, “Well, if that’s divine love, I know all about it.”  Hey, it’s a point in Bernini’s favor that he’d inspired orgasms in women often enough to be able to depict one accurately.
As long as I am on blasphemous topics, imagine what Bernini might have wrought, given the scriptural description of Mary’s experience of impregnation.
“And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” Mary replies, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” Afterward, Mary says, “For he that is mighty hath done to me great things…”
Just pause for a moment, and imagine what Bernini would envision.
I wish I could tell you my experience with this pinnacle of the sculptural art, be it mystic vision or sensual rapture, was sublime and raised my thoughts to salvation.
Not really. I was a still point in a swirling rush of multiple tour groups, mostly teenagers on field trips. They tittered and sniggered as only young people, who have recently discovered the existence of sex and think they’ve invented it, will do. They paraded past the chapel, prodded by chaperones, or drifted in clumps, gossiping, tossing their hair (girls) kicking each other covertly (boys). Sadly, most of them kept their backs to the Bernini. I don’t know if they were indifferent or embarrassed.
Clusters of elderly foreign tourists led by guides were more earnest, attending to their guides, dutifully gazed at the tableau, pretending the mildly detached interest of non-combatants.
After an hour I’d had the opportunity to investigate the rest of the interior, the kind of ornate, over-the-top decor that put the OMG into RocOMGco. Like, the ceiling, other chapels of beautifully rendered statuary.By noon it was time to move on, and on my way to La Matriciana, I passed this Moses and one of half a dozen casually spitting lions on the corner.I haven’t walked far before I’m shivering. Short sleeve weather turned into raining and chilly. This was the weather I’d expected when I signed on for March. I am grateful it’s been so consistently mild and pleasant. Fortunately, the restaurant wasn’t far, and I again, I dined well.

I had a wonderful time trying to sketch Bernini’s expression of rapture and eating saltimbocca.
Given the weather, I had an abbreviated day. I returned to the St. Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs and took more time to listen to the audio history of Michelangelo’s conversion of a piece of the Diocletian Bath’s real estate into a Christian Basilica.
**Bernini tried to murder his brother Luigi and broke his ribs with a crowbar for poaching his (married) mistress, Costanza Piccolomini. Worse, he sent a flunky to slash her face with a knife. She ends up festering in prison, charged with adultery for four months. He gets a slap on the wrist (a fine that is later dismissed), a bride, and this commission.**