Here at the American Academy in Rome, the weather’s hot, the oranges are thumping to the ground in the back yard, and someone’s getting murdered every night at 11:30 on the stage of the open air theater just across the street. Above, Bernini’s St. Theresa in the throes of rapture during what she called ”an intercourse between the soul and God.” She said, “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.” (And despite what you were thinking, “The pain is not bodily, but spiritual, though,” um, “the body has its share in it, even a large one.”)
Tags: American Academy in Rome, rome, st. theresa