By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

“HE appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The agony was so excruciating that I moaned, yet the pleasure of this excruciating pain was so overpowering that I couldn’t wish it away. The spirit is now content with nothing other than God.”

These words, written by Teresa of Avila were the basis of “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” a sculpture done by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1647–1652, commissioned by Cardinal Federico Cornaro for his own chapel, mounted in an elevated shrine at the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. The masterpiece depicts Saint Teresa, a woman of nobility who became a nun, “atop a cloud, implying her ascent to the heavens, with beams of gold light flowing down on her. Natural light is infused into the area from a secret window above it. As a look of rapture fills Teresa’s face, a winged angel wields a lance poised to be thrown into her chest.”

Bernini spent a lifetime examining sculptural forms, contributing to the advancement of an energetic and vibrant style, centering on intense emotional expressionism, characteristic of the Baroque era.

Another masterpiece, Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss by Italian artist Antonio Canova in 1787-1793, depicts god Eros (or Cupid) and Psyche, mythological lovers at a moment of intense emotion. The sculpture was inspired by a Roman painting which traces its inspiration from the novel The Golden Ass (a.k.a Metamorphoses) written by Lucius Apuleius (1650) and inspired many painters and sculptors. His work birthed a poem I wrote dated 24 April 2022, imagining the absence of a beloved, after the experience of a rupture, in the human dimension.

 

Your Face

Who is with you now, I wonder
I wonder, who stares at you,
sleeping, touching your face
gently, between her hands,
wondering, what a fine art
you are, almost afraid to touch
a divine sculpture
afraid to dent with her fingers
the delicate, translucent alabaster
from heaven’s gate?

Am I to believe, there is no one else
in your heart, in your thoughts
but my face, an ordinary face
still being perfected by the experience
of you, by whose breath I breathe
by whose touch, I become?

I wonder if, in your dreams
If, in your daydreams
you think of me, looking
as I look at you, with closed eyes
the possibility of us, meeting
face to face, drawn closer
burning, each other’s lips?

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