2024-03-24 23:57:33
For centuries the faithful and travelers have reached Rome, the “caput mundi”, not only to accumulate indulgences, but essentially to be amazed and fascinated by what human ingenuity and ability had been able to achieve to exalt power and faith.
In the baroque Rome of the seventeenth century, that of the great Popes, the search for the “amazing” – capable of astonishing and distracting – reached its absolute peak. The creator of this “miracle” was Gianlorenzo Bernini. In addition to being a sublime sculptor, architect and set designer, he was an authentic genius in the creation of “special effects”: in creating wonder. In fact, no one was able to portray the “non-human” like him. His uniqueness: making the encounter with the divine visible: ecstasy.
A confirmation? A short “Roman walk” in three stages, seeking the sublime “signed” by Bernini.
First stop: St. Peter’s Square. Just stand in the center of the enormous square he designed to feel truly “embraced”. Gianlorenzo managed to realize the wish of Pope Alexander VII Chigi who wanted to convey the concept of “inclusion” to the faithful. In reality, finding ourselves surrounded by an imposing forest of 284 mighty columns gave, and continues to give, the sense of being ourselves at the center of the world and at the same time being in the presence of the supernatural. Second stop: the Carmelite Church of Santa Maria Vittoria. There you can relive the amazement and wonder that Cardinal Federico Cornaro who commissioned the work certainly also felt. In fact, Bernini managed to take, in marble, an instant photograph of a miracle! More precisely than the “transverberation” of Saint Teresa of Avila. It is the work that we all know as the “ecstasy” of the Spanish mystic sanctified a few years earlier. Bernini’s absolute genius in recounting this extraordinary event with stone was to create the mystical scene in a theater complete with side boxes where the cardinals and doges of the Cornaro family were witnessing the “spectacle” of the precise moment in which the Angel pierced the heart of the Saint, the divine “transverberation”. Saint Teresa herself directly testifies to what happened in her autobiography in her work 29 chapter 13 in which she writes: “I saw an angel in corporeal form near me on the left side. That cherub was holding in his hand a long golden arrow whose tip seemed to have a little fire. It seemed that he was hitting my heart several times, but the sweetness that this enormous pain instilled in me was so great that there was no need to wish for an end to it.”
Right from the start, that pain that led to bliss was interpreted, not without malice, as an ecstasy resulting from a physical orgasm where the Saint, now powerless, languidly abandons her limbs, with her eyes rolled back by passion and her mouth moaning. . All on a cloud that rises and is illuminated by the Divine. And this not only due to the dazzling rays that descend from the sky, but also thanks to the natural light that magically illuminates the marble group thanks to the small window which, like a modern spotlight, illuminates the main scene of a theatrical performance from above. And then what can we say, again, about that mischievous expression of the tempting angel?
Third stop: Leaving aside a visit to that unmissable treasure chest that is the Borghese Gallery (where the magnanimous Cardinal Scipione Borghese had collected the greatest masterpieces of his “protege”) it is worth reaching the church of San Francesco a Ripa in Trastevere. There, now at a mature age, Bernini confirmed his unparalleled ability to stop, to immortalise, the fleeting moment. Once again it is the representation of another impalpable ecstasy. It is the one sculpted in the sublime funerary monument of Blessed Ludovica Albertoni.
2024-03-24 23:57:33