the effects are theatrical, the cornaro family seeming to observe the scene from their boxes, and the chapel illustrates a moment where divinity intrudes on an earthly body. caroline babcock speaks of bernini's melding of sensual and spiritual pleasure in the "orgiastic" grouping as both intentional and influential on artists and writers of the day. irving lavin said "the transverberation becomes a point of contact between earth and heaven, between matter and spirit". as bernini biographer franco mormando points out, although bernini's point of departure for his depiction of teresa's mystical experience was her own description, there were many details about the experience that she never specifies ("e.g.", the position of her body) and that bernini simply supplied from his own artistic imagination, all with an aim of increasing the nearly transgressively sensual charge of the episode: "certainly no other artist, in rendering the scene, before or after bernini, dared as much in transforming the saint's appearance."