The commission was completed in The ensemble includes at the sides two sets of donor portraits of members of the Cornaro family , who watch the main central group as though in boxes in a theatre. The group is generally considered to be one of the sculptural masterpieces of the High Roman Baroque. The entire ensemble was overseen and completed by a mature Bernini during the Pamphili papacy of Innocent X. When Innocent acceded to the papal throne, he shunned Bernini's artistic services; the sculptor had been the favourite artist of the previous and profligate Barberini pope, Urban VIII.
Without papal patronage, the services of Bernini's studio were therefore available to a patron such as the Venetian Cardinal Federico Cornaro β Cornaro had chosen the hitherto unremarkable church of the Discalced Carmelites for his burial chapel. Paul in Ecstasy', which was replaced by Bernini's dramatization of a religious experience undergone and related by the first Discalced Carmelite saint, who had been canonised not long before, in A small format terracotta model of about 47 cm 19 in was created between and The sculpture represents the first embodiment of the project, with traces of Bernini's fingerprints still visible.
The model belongs to the Hermitage Museum's collection. The two central sculptural figures of the swooning nun and the angel with the spear derive from an episode described by Teresa of Avila , a mystical cloistered Discalced Carmelite reformer and nun, in her autobiography, The Life of Teresa of Jesus.
Her experience of religious ecstasy in her encounter with the angel is described as follows:. I 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. The group is illuminated by natural light which filters through a hidden window in the dome of the surrounding aedicule, and underscored by gilded stucco rays. Teresa is shown lying on a cloud indicating that this is intended to be a divine apparition we are witnessing.
