Teresa described the event with extraordinary precision in chapter 29 of her Autobiography: 'I saw beside me, on the left, an angel in bodily form, very beautiful. In his hands I saw a long golden dart at whose iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. With this he seemed to pierce my heart several times, so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he drew it out, I thought he was drawing them out with it, and he left me all on fire with great love of God. The pain was so sharp that it made me utter several moans; and so excessive was the sweetness caused by this intense pain that one can never wish to lose it.'
After her death in 1582 her body was found incorrupt. Anatomical examinations of her heart, removed for veneration as a separate relic in 1873 and 1972, reportedly found a perforation passing through the muscle tissue from one side to the other. The relic is preserved at the Convent of the Annunciation, Alba de Tormes. Bernini's marble in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome (1647–52) is the supreme artistic depiction.