La Santa Teresa del Bernini tra critica e psicoanalisi

Since the Cornaro chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria was inaugurated in 1652, the Santa Teresa by Bernini, represented in the supreme experience of transverberatio, keeps drawing the attention of a universal audience. As suggested by the chapel view attributed to Guidobaldo Abbatini, the sculpture has to be viewed from far away. If you get closer to it, the balustrade marks the limit from where – as noted by marquess De Sade - the desire of the spectator to see beyond is not satisfied. The sculptor, like Teresa in the story of her mystic life, doesn’t miss anything of the sensational encounter, putting it far enough so the spectator cannot really say what is happening. The images of Teresa’s face, spread out and published insistently since the beginning of the 20th century, show the will to overcome that boundary to the visible and the intelligible that the Baroque mentality of Bernini had set. In this way, the eye seems to prefer the “piece”, the reassuring image of a jouissance that is often misinterpreted in the “phallic” sense, the only one contemporary word seemed to be able to understand. Starting from St. Teresa, and bearing in mind the interpretation offered by Bernini, the psychoanalysis, from Mary Bonaparte to Jacques Lacan, wondered about the nature of that feminine jouissance. In the first edition of Lacan’s Seminary XX (1975), titled Ancore, we find the Teresa by Bernini in the front cover. A few years earlier, in 1957, Georges Bataille also included The St. Teresa as an illustration in his essay L’Érotisme. Since then, countless psychoanalytic and anthropologic publications used the face of Teresa by Bernini as front cover. The essay, that gathers the most significant opinions on the Bernini’s sculpture, also investigates on the contribution that the psychoanalysis and its language can offer to the comprehension and to the critic of this masterpiece.