Your Daily Art: Beautiful Agony

The Ecstacy of St. Teresa, 1645-1652 by Bernini, Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome."I saw an angel beside me toward the left side, in bodily form�He was not very large, but small, very beautiful, his face so blazing with light that he seemed to be one of the very highest angels, who appear all on fire. They must be those they call Cherubim�I saw in his hands a long dart of gold, and at the end of the iron there seemed to me to be a little fire. Mature Women This I thought he thrust through my heart several times, and that it reached my very entrails. As he withdrew it, I thought it brought them with it, and left me all burning with a great love of God. So great was the pain, that it made me give those moans; and so utter the sweetness that this sharpest of pains gave me, that there was no wanting it to stop, nor is there any contenting of the soul with less than God�.