She shimmers and shines — her simple brown robe and cream cape transformed into lustrous waves of gold. She holds a quill pen in her right hand and cradles a book of her spiritual writings in her left. On this morning, Linda Wolk-Simon is standing before her.

“Think about what this would have looked like on an altar, in the shadowy light of the church. The candlelight flickering in front of her,” Wolk-Simon says of the statue of St. Teresa of Avila created in the late 1600s by Italian artist Ciro Ferri. “Ferri is playing with degrees of polish on the surfaces and how the light and the shadow interacted. It would have seemed as if she was moving and the drapery was rustling. It would have been a very stirring experience for those who were able to get close enough.”