This drawing is based on Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, a sculpture that sits in a very different emotional space to The Rape of Proserpina, my last share, but is just as intense. Where Proserpina is about force and resistance, Saint Teresa is about surrender, vulnerability, and a body overwhelmed by experience.
It’s a work that has always felt quietly unsettling to me. Not because it is overtly violent, but because it is so exposed.
Studying Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
Bernini completed The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa in the mid 1600s as part of the Cornaro Chapel in Rome. It depicts a moment described by Saint Teresa of Ávila in which an angel pierces her heart with a golden spear, inducing what she described as intense spiritual rapture.
Bernini translates this inner, invisible experience into something entirely physical. Teresa’s body slackens. Her head tilts back. Her mouth opens. Her limbs appear heavy, almost unresponsive. The angel, by contrast, is calm, composed, almost tender in his control of the moment.
What makes this sculpture so powerful is the ambiguity. The experience is spiritual, but the body’s response is unmistakably corporeal. Bernini does not separate the sacred from the physical. He fuses them.
That tension is what drew me to this piece.
The Body as the Site of Experience
When I was drawing this statue, I focused on the weight in Teresa’s body. The way her drapery pools and folds, amplifying the sense of collapse and surrender. Her expression sits somewhere between pain, pleasure, devotion, and release. It is not clean or easily categorised.
This is a sculpture about being overtaken by something larger than yourself. Teresa is not performing ecstasy. She is in it. Her body gives that away.
Bernini’s technical skill is extraordinary, particularly in the handling of fabric. The drapery is not decorative. It mirrors her internal state, restless, heavy, almost turbulent, while her face remains open and unguarded.
Close-Up Details From the Drawing
Her expression was the emotional centre of the drawing. It’s not serene. It’s vulnerable, exposed, and unfiltered.
The angel’s gesture is gentle but deliberate. The control in his posture contrasts sharply with Teresa’s surrender.
The folds of fabric carry much of the movement and intensity of the piece. Drawing them felt essential to capturing the emotional weight of the moment.
Drawing Sacred Sculpture Without Distance
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa is often discussed in terms of religious symbolism or Baroque theatricality, but what keeps it relevant is how human it feels. This is a body responding to experience in a way that is recognisable, regardless of belief.
When drawing it, I wasn’t interested in resolving the ambiguity or making it feel polite. The power of the sculpture lies in the fact that it resists a single interpretation. It is devotional and bodily at the same time.
Drawing from sculpture like this requires slowing down completely. You have to sit with the work long enough to understand what it’s doing beneath the surface.
The Classical Statue Drawing Collection – Prints coming soon
This drawing is part of a growing collection of classical statues I have been working on. Each piece in the series explores a figure whose body carries emotional, psychological, or spiritual intensity, not just idealised form.
Together, these works sit in conversation with each other. Proserpina resists. Teresa surrenders. Both are bodies experiencing something overwhelming.
The full statue drawing collection will be available soon as high quality prints. When they are released, you’ll be able to find them in the shop. I’ll be sharing more drawings from the series as the collection continues to develop.
Some art is loud in its violence. Some is quiet in its vulnerability. The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa sits firmly in the latter space. This drawing is my way of staying with that moment, without trying to explain it away.