Orgasmic Baroque sculpture

[Roxanne Appleby]

Bernini's "Ecstacy of St. Theresa"

http://www.gageacademy.org/upload/06_Bernini_Ecstacy_of_St_Theresa.jpg


http://www.smarthistory.org/images/Bernini.jpg

Better face close-up here, but it's too wide for lit.


Her toes are curled too but I can't find a picture.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

That's the crucial thing about mysticism, ecstatic response to God. She really got a lot of flack about it because it didn't fit into the political machine the church had become but she was held in such high regards by others that the bishopist faction couldn't touch her. Orgasm is just the only way that the sculptor can visually express what she felt. Perfectly appropriate.

 

[champagne1982]

http://www.luc.edu/depts/history/dennis/Visual_Arts/02-Baroque_Bernini_Ecstasy-of-St-Theresa.jpg
Her toes don't look curled to me...

 

[SlickTony]

This work figured in a novel by Anne River Siddons called Hill Towns, and ever since I read it I'd been curious about it--I'd never seen it. She definitely does look like she's in ecstasy. Thanks for posting that, Roxanne.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Her toes don't look curled to me...

Picky, picky - they're not straight . . .

 

[Equinoxe]

Picky, picky - they're not straight . . .

Yes, but her having hammer toes doesn't quite leave the same impression, now does it?

 

[Guest]

Bernini's "Ecstacy of St. Theresa"

http://www.gageacademy.org/upload/06_Bernini_Ecstacy_of_St_Theresa.jpg


http://www.smarthistory.org/images/Bernini.jpg

Better face close-up here, but it's too wide for lit.


Her toes are curled too but I can't find a picture.

I guess you need to get ecstasy any way you can.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I guess you need to get ecstasy any way you can.

I've gotten it with music. Lord, do I remember that . . .

 

[Pure]

note

on the "ecstasy of st. teresa" (see spelling).

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...la++spain&um=1&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:*&sa=G


the orgasmic quality is not merely in the sculpure but in teresa's words describing the experience, reporting in Wiki as follows:

saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. 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 pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.[3]

 

[WRJames]

I saw this while I was in Rome -- as I recall, you couldn't get very close to it. There are some very erotic Bernini statues in the Villa Borghesi that you can walk up to and all around. He had the ability to make marble seem like butter -- in the Rape of Persephone you can see fingers sinking into flesh.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I think that's what set modernism off. What they couldn't match, they devalued.

 

[WRJames]

I think that's what set modernism off. What they couldn't match, they devalued.

The "dead hand of the past." Actually, that is one thing that discouraged me from a career in music -- in the 60's, what passed for serious musical composition was just awful.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

The "dead hand of the past." Actually, that is one thing that discouraged me from a career in music -- in the 60's, what passed for serious musical composition was just awful.

Understatement, that man. I remember when Karlheinz Stockhausen was supposed to be an up and coming young composer. The clown was a joke. Orchestra members would deliberately play his music wrong and he couldn't tell the difference. Same stupid shit when he died. "Mourned pioneer in 20th Century music." Gag a maggot!

 

[shereads]

Bernini's "Ecstacy of St. Theresa"

http://www.gageacademy.org/upload/06_Bernini_Ecstacy_of_St_Theresa.jpg


http://www.smarthistory.org/images/Bernini.jpg

Better face close-up here, but it's too wide for lit.


Her toes are curled too but I can't find a picture.

Her toes are curled?!

That never happened to me in church. Not once. I'm not even sure Southern Baptists are allowed to experience toe-curling.

Edited to add: Who else thinks there's an implicit nipple-pinch going on beneath all that drapery?

 

[WRJames]

Is toe curling a good thing? I've had my toes cramp at very inconvenient moments.

 

[shereads]

the orgasmic quality is not merely in the sculpure but in teresa's words describing the experience, reporting in Wiki as follows:

saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. 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 pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.

That's a solid five.

Did she write any other erotica? Or just that snippet?

 

[shereads]

The "dead hand of the past." Actually, that is one thing that discouraged me from a career in music -- in the 60's, what passed for serious musical composition was just awful.

If it ain't baroque, don't fix it.

 

[jomar]

If it ain't baroque, don't fix it.

It was a long walk to get there, but totally worth it.

 

[shereads]

It was a long walk to get there, but totally worth it.

Rox, Slyc, WR James and I have been conspiring for weeks to set up the pun. It's been exhausting, and I for one am glad it's over with.

 

[jomar]

Rox, Slyc, WR James and I have been conspiring for weeks to set up the pun. It's been exhausting, and I for one am glad it's over with.

Amen. The tension was almost too much to bear.