Short-answer question (SAQ)
Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
- Unit 2
- 3 points
- About 13 minutes
You read one source and answer three short parts (A, B and C) about it, each in a few sentences. Each part asks you to describe or explain something about the source or the history around it. On the exam: 3 required questions in 40 minutes (Section I, Part B), 20% of the score. Starting May 2027 every SAQ has a source: question 1 a secondary text, question 2 a primary text, question 3 a non-text source such as an image, map or chart.
The question and its sources
Use the image described below to answer all parts of the question that follows. On the exam you would see the image itself; here it is described in words.
Image
A white marble sculpture of two figures, set above the altar of a side chapel in a Roman church. On the left stands a smiling, winged young angel in a light, rippling robe. In his raised right hand he holds a golden arrow; with his other hand he gently lifts the edge of the second figure's robe.
On the right, Saint Teresa of Ávila, a sixteenth-century Spanish nun, lies back on a rough marble cloud, as if floating in the air. Her eyes are nearly closed, her mouth is open and her head falls back. One bare foot hangs below the cloud, and her heavy robe falls in deep, twisting folds that seem to move.
Behind the figures, dozens of gilded bronze rays stream down from above like beams of light. The scene is framed by columns of dark green speckled marble and a curved, richly carved and gilded frame, so it looks like a vision on a stage.
Source: Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Italian sculptor and architect, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, marble and gilded bronze, 1647–1652. Cornaro Chapel, church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. The sculpture shows a vision that Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) described in her autobiography, in which an angel pierced her heart with a golden spear and filled her with the love of God. The Catholic Church declared Teresa a saint in 1622.
Suggested time: 13 minutes
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Part (a)
1 pointDescribe ONE feature of the sculpture that is characteristic of Baroque art.
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Part (b)
1 pointExplain how the sculpture reflects ONE goal of the Catholic Reformation in the period 1540–1650.
0 / 2,500 characters
Part (c)
1 pointExplain ONE way that Protestant reformers' approach to religious images or worship differed from the Catholic approach shown in the sculpture in the period 1517–1650.
0 / 2,500 characters
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