THE BAROQUE IN ROMAN CATHOLIC COUNTRIES C. l60O-£. 1760
illusion into reality. Bernini's famous chapel of St. Teresa in the
cliurch of S. Maria della Vittoria in Rome proves that (pi. Lxvm).
The chapel, which dates from 1646, is faced with dark marbles,
their gleaming surfaces of amber, gold and pink reflecting the light
in ever-changing patterns. In the middle of the wall in front of the
entrance is the altar of the saint. It is flanked by heavy coupled
columns and pilasters with a broken pediment, placed on the slant
so that they come forward towards us and then recede to focus our
attention on the centre of the altar, where one would expect to find
a painting, but where there is a niche with a sculptural group, treated
like a picture and giving an illusion of reality that is as startling to-
day as it was three hundred years ago. Everything in the chapel
contributes to this peinture vivante illusion. Along the walls on the
right and the left there are also niches opened into the chapel walls,
and there Bernini has portrayed in marble, behind balconies, mem-
bers of the Cornaro family, die donors of the chapel, watching with
us the miraculous scene, precisely as though they were in the boxes,
and we in the stalls of a theatre.
The boundary line between our world and the world of art is in
this most ingeniously effaced. As our own attention and that of the
marble figures is directed towards the same goal, we cannot help
giving the same degree of reality first to them as to ourselves, and
then to the figures on the altar too. And Bernini has used all his
mastery in the modelling of St. Teresa and the angel to help in that
deception. The heavy cloak of the nun, the fluffiness of the clouds,
the light drapery of the youthful angel and his soft flesh are all
rendered with an exquisite realism. The expression of the saint in
the miracle of the union with Christ is of an unforgettable volup-
tuous ecstasy. She faints as though overwhelmed by a physical
penetration. At the same time she is raised into the air, and the
diagonal sweep of the group makes us believe the impossible.
Beams of gold—they are gilt metal shafts—conceal the back wall of
tie niche, and an opening high up behind the entablature glazed with
a yellow pane models the scene with a magical light.
The chapel of St. Teresa is the most daring example of such
illusionism in Rome. It is in fact an exception, Rome has never
really believed in extremes. Bernini was a Neapolitan; and Naples
was Spanish. To experience the thrills of extremes and excesses one
^ust indeed go to Spain, or else to Portugal, or of course Germany.
To these countries the Baroque came late, but it was taken up with
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