Wawel castle hosts first exhibition dedicated to Gianlorenzo Bernini

The Royal Castle at Wawel in Kraków, Poland, opened the first exhibition in the country dedicated to the 17th-century Italian sculptor and architect Gianlorenzo Bernini.

While Bernini is famous for designing the colonnade at St. Peter's Square in Vatican City and the baldachin over St.

Peter's tomb, the exhibition focuses on his masterpiece, "Ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Avila." Because the original marble sculpture remains in the Cornaro Chapel in Rome, the curators used large-scale photographs and various related works from Italian, German, and Polish collections to tell his story. The exhibition explores how Baroque artists captured the invisible state of mystical ecstasy.

The curators highlighted how Bernini combined sculpture, architecture, and light to create a "theatrum sacrum." The display includes a 1:1 scale model of Saint Teresa's face from Bernini's workshop and sketches that show his process of refining the mystic's expression. These materials demonstrate how the artist moved from a frontal, closed-eyed pose to a more sensual, profile view to better convey spiritual elevation.

The curators also presented works by Bernini's followers to show how the theme of ecstasy became a central pillar of art following the Council of Trent. This artistic trend responded to the Counter-Reformation and a growing human interest in existential questions that rational language could not explain.

The show concludes by emphasizing the importance of bozzetti and models, which were once seen only as intermediate steps but are now valued as independent works of art that preserve the direct hand of the master.