Who knew that saintliness could be so erotic?
In Bernini's "The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa" and Reni's "Saint Sebastian," erotic satisfaction becomes a metaphor of divine transformation - or is it the other way around?
In Bernini, a boyish angel smiles as he straddles Theresa's passive and reclining body. The angel wields an arrow and looks ready to pierce, and Theresa, whose face registers an emotion equal parts pleasure and pain, seems ready to accept her divine punishment. (George Bataille gives a fuller, richer analysis of the sculpture in his book on Erotism).
In Reni's portrait of Sebastian, the youthful saint has already been penetrated by the arrows that make his martyrdom possible. He looks acquiescent, resigned: the body may be in pain (and about to die), but a greater reward is coming. The body's exposed, lovingly detailed quality suggests, however, that some pleasures are available on earth and in the flesh, not just in heaven and in the spirit. (Reni's portrait enshrines Sebastian as an icon in the queer continuum: it was one of Oscar Wilde's favorite paintings, and authors as different as Yukio Mishima and Tennessee Williams have adapted the image for their use.)
If the beauty of Christ is sometimes represented in terms more earthly than divine, the implicit duality of flesh and spirit in such a representation participates in a tradition of works that argue the interrelationship between divinity and the eroticized human body.
Posted by gminter at April 25, 2004 12:08 PM