Escaping Dantean Space: On Creating Zones of Care in the Biography of St. Teresa, in Marble and Makeup and through Cinematography

Abstract

Advancing this spatial investigation into Heavenly spaces, this chapter uses two famous statues by the Baroque sculptor Bernini to launch new questions about narrative space. First, it argues that Bernini’s statue the Ecstasy of St. Teresa (1647–1652) introduces an inviting form of Character space that might be called Ecstatic space. Unlike Dantean space, Ecstatic space is imbued with an ethics of care and a Communal empathy and not the compassionate empathy common to Dantean spaces. The chapter then examines three readings offered by Bernini’s tableau Apollo and Daphne (1622–1625), revealing that viewers bring their own tendencies towards DisPassionate, Dramatic and Dantean readings to a work, imposing their own frames of reception and empathetic culture on the world. By contrast, Macdowell’s answering sculpture Daphne purposefully closes down all other spatial readings leaving only a Dantean Space empathy for the raped Daphne Lastly the Innocent character as a bearer of new narrative spaces and social bonds is introduced. These examples help us understand the cinematic portrayal of some women as ‘beautiful innocents,’ using specific lighting and narrative techniques to idealize them in suspect ways.