On Angels & Demons

Admittedly, I only recently read Dan Browns Angels & Demons (henceforth A&D). The book itself was published in 2000 and I remotely remembered my cousin telling me about 2 years back that I should read it. At the time I was reading Da Vinci’s Code (henceforth referred to as DVC). I was quite adamant about it, and only wanted to read DVC’s Special Illustrated Edition, that comes with the hardcover and all of the relevant work of arts neatly printed and arranged in the pages of the book for easy reference. Certainly beats googling every few pages that you turned.

But anyway, the point is, one of the reason I read A&D was because the movie was out. And it is a great personal boon for me that I should watch any movie based on a work of literature without actually reading the book first. And so here I am, feeling a bit more enriched, fresh after A&D… What took me so long?? Well, I’ve always known it would be one of the books that I’d read so what’s the hurry. Well the movie was the hurry apparently.

I liked it. It was a really good book with an unexpectedly sad twist in the end. But out of all the works of arts, more specificaly, Bernini’s work of art that piqued my curiosity and I though worth googling (because I do not have the special illustrated edition nor do I know if they did publish one), I was especially curious about the Ecstasy of St. Teresa.

I mean come on, a 3.5m marble sculpture of a nun, supposedly having a spiritually divine experience OR … an orgasm??? SCANDALOUS! I just had to look it up. How can one not?? And this gigantic structure, parked in a church? How could they get away with this? How could someone disguise a sculpture of a nun having an orgasm and still manage to display it in a church??? This is why I love history, still full of surprises after all these years. So I googled it and for the benefit of whoever will read my blog, here is The Ecstasy of St Teresa: