Santa Maria della Vittoria: Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
Why is it significant?
Step inside and let the gold and coloured marble of the nave wash over you, then walk to the chapel on the left of the main altar.
Key Facts
| Place | Santa Maria della Vittoria: Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa |
|---|---|
| Address | Via XX Settembre 17, 00187 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.90470, 12.49420 |
| Part of Walk | Rivals on the Quirinal: Bernini vs Borromini in Baroque Rome |
| Generated | Generated |
Step inside and let the gold and coloured marble of the nave wash over you, then walk to the chapel on the left of the main altar. Bathed in light that seems to come from nowhere, a woman lies back on a cloud, her eyes half closed, her lips parted, while a smiling angel stands over her with a golden arrow.
This is the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, by Bernini, finished around 1652. Teresa of Ávila, the Spanish mystic, described in her own writings a vision in which an angel pierced her heart again and again with a fiery dart, leaving her in a pain so sweet that she wished it would never end. Bernini took her words literally, and turned them into marble.
Look up. The light falling on her comes through a hidden window above the chapel, and gilded rays of bronze stream down behind the figures. Now look to the sides. In two carved balconies, like boxes at the opera, sit members of the Cornaro family who paid for the chapel, chatting, reading, leaning forward to see better. Bernini made the patrons into an audience. Remember that he also wrote and staged plays. This chapel is a theatre, and you are in the stalls.
Visitors have been blushing in front of Teresa for three and a half centuries. An eighteenth-century French traveller, Charles de Brosses, is said to have remarked that if this was divine love, he knew it well. Bernini would probably have shrugged: the whole point of baroque art was to make you feel faith in your body, not just think it.
The church's name has its own story. In 1620 a Catholic army won the Battle of the White Mountain near Prague, at the start of the Thirty Years War, and an image of the Virgin credited with the victory was brought here in triumph. Hence, Our Lady of Victory. As you come out, look across the road at the giant Moses in the fountain of Pope Sixtus the Fifth's aqueduct, the Acqua Felice, finished around 1588. Romans have called him the ugly Moses for four centuries... but without that water, none of this baroque hill could have been built. Now walk on past him towards Piazza della Repubblica, and look for a church whose front is the broken brick wall of an ancient Roman bath.