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>Kwild thing wrote: ->How would you respond to someone who said Bernini's Ecstasy of St. >Teresa is too erotic to be in a church? What a wonderfully stunning question! Surely a work like this is meant to be meditated on, to spend time with (I mean, he worked on it for seven years) and have the layers of meaning reveal themselves (that is, after all, why such pieces are placed in a chapel, one presumes); we do disservice to dismiss them simply because they remind us of a really great saturday night we had back in college. Perhaps Bernini indeed thought he was showing us something we almost shouldn't see; maybe that's why he places the Cornaro family in little opera boxes to the side, where they can discuss the event, but are not permitted to view it. This allows us to question, upon the shock of witnessing this privileged gift of transverberation, whether we should shield our eyes and walk on, or sit quietly and reverently and let the sculpture - and the experience behind/within the sculpture - work on us. Maybe part of our uncertainty attaches to where we "place" this eroticism: is it inherent in Santa Teresa's experience? Was it produced by Bernini's artistic choices (and thrilling command)? Was it present in the responses of the faithful, entering the chapel, across the centuries? Or is it more our nearly-reflex response, socially drilled to perceive - or at least to momentarily consider - a sexual subtext in most images? I almost believe the more fundamental question is, Is the mystic (or ecstatic) experience too powerful "to be in a church?" If the mystic experience can lead to a sustained moment in which the Divine is felt to wholly penetrate one's person/being, it would seem wholly natural for that experience to manifest itself sensually - sensually, existentially, and intellectually, all three, inseparable. I actually think the Bernini rather poetically subdued, given the originating text (Caveat: Noone having thought to send me to Rome, I only know the piece from photographs). There's certainly a precedent for more dramatic interpretations of mystics' experiences, heavier on the fire and piercing and all. If anything, I think the angel and arrow are the weakest components of the sculpture: the angel's face does not "seem to burn with fire" or possess anything more than passing physical beauty; and the arrow seems to carry precious little promise of divine power or love (not to mention a flame). But the portrayal of Santa Teresa is marvelous: yes, we can read her as erotically fulfilled (if we must), but we can also see her as emptied out of herself, of her ego, and thus filled with the Divine. As Teresa says, "as [the angel] drew [the arrow] out, he dragged me with it": you can certainly sense this state of compliant malleabililty in her body language. She has given herself wholly over to the Divine. Is that erotic? It depends on how we compartmentalize experience. Earlier today and yesterday there were references to St. Catherine's neuroses and Hildegard's migraines (Hmm. how odd they all just happen to be women), as well as a well-earned caution against reading too much of our contemporary ills in them. Surely there is something to be said for the same caution about centuries-past mysticism. Intransigent little St. Bernard of Clairvaux nevertheless found time to suckle at the breast of the Virgin - and even if we decide to attribute his claim to a political motive, we must account for the subsequent similar experiences of many monks who were inspired to "try it." Can we separate ourselves from the sexualized breast enough to imagine this mystical experience as "pure", or at least free of licentiousness? I think it might be useful to distinguish portrayals of the religious experience that are, variously, sensuous; titillating; or practically pornographic. Among the latter I would unhesitatingly place Caravaggio's John the Baptist, from the Capitoline museum; strong open legs, visible "member", taking a ram's horns in his grasp (Hey, who needs subtext here?). In the middle would come still more Caravaggios, of course, but also any number of St. Sebastians, and certain passages in a handful of Tiepolos, titillating being, in my mind, an expression of gratuitous sensuality, something which impedes rather than furthers the narrative flow or meaning. and then there's sensual: how long a list do we want? Ribera? Zurbaran? Gerard David? Rembrandt's Bathsheba? the look of love in the eyes of the Infant being handed to Mary in Giotto's mural? the Babe's hand (and eyes) on His mother's ivory breast in the Master of Mary Magdalene's diptych? It is not that the Bernini is too erotic to be in a church, but rather that we are too rushed to give ourselves over to his meditations, as Santa Teresa gave herself over fully enough to experience the "ecstacy [which] was God himself." So, kwildgen, i guess (seeing how much i wrote) I would respond to someone who said the Bernini is too erotic, by talking until they said, 'okay, sorry i brought it up' and walked away. Here's hoping you're not and don't. jm %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%