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The Madonna of Port Lligat.

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Larger Image	Larger image may be viewed by UofL faculty, staff, and students only (log-in required using ULink username/password) at: http://echo.louisville.edu/login?url=http://vrc-web.louisville.edu/Jpegs/2440/2447-26.jpg
Title	The Madonna of Port Lligat.
Creator	Dali, Salvador (Spanish painter and printmaker, 1904-1989)
Date	1949
Cultural Context	Spanish European Western European
Style/Period	Surrealist Modern (styles and periods) Modernist
Theme	Paintings (visual works) Oil paintings (visual works) Avant-garde Religious art Religious symbolism Symbols Symbolism (artistic concept) Imagery Roman Catholicism Christianity Figurative art Figures (representations) Front views Women Wives Spouses Mothers Religious (people) Saints Children (people by age group) Infants Youth Sons Costume (mode of fashion) Drapery (representations) Hairstyles Sitting Thrones Ceremonial chairs Chairs (furniture forms) Seating furniture Furniture Fragments Lemon (fruit) Citrus fruit Fruit Food Egg Scallop shell Shell (animal material) Seashell Crosses (motifs) Crosses (objects) Religious objects Ceremonial objects Shadows Bodies of water Cliffs
Subject	Paintings Oil paintings Symbols Catholicism Christianity Women Spouses Mothers Saints Children Infants People associated with religion Sitting Floating Prayer Clothing & dress Hairstyles Thrones Chairs Seating furniture Furniture Lemons Citrus fruit Fruit Food Eggs Shells Crosses Religious articles Ceremonial objects Lifting & carrying Shadows Bodies of water Cliffs
Description	First version; "Dali's atomic variation on the Assumption, with Gala as tutelary goddess of Port Lligat." (Caption); Dali's first 'religious painting', designed to ingratiate himself with Church and State, was The Madonna of Port Lligat, about which he had begun to think in America. It was executed in the spring and summer of 1949. The composition of the small-scale painting (48.9 x 37.5 cm) derives clearly from the 'atomic' works done from 1945 onwards in the wake of Hiroshima, particularly Leda Atomica and Dematerialization Near Nero's Nose, but the coloring is pure Italian Renaissance. […] The egg which hangs over the head of the Virgin, suspended by a thread from a venus-shell, Dali borrowed from Piero della Francesca's Madonna with the Duke of Urbino as Donor, better known as the Brera Madonna, which he had reproduced the previous year in 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship. Piero's egg, he says there, was 'one of the greatest mysteries of the painting of the Renaissance'. Later Dali explained that, since the ancients considered the ellipse the most perfect form in nature, the egg was a very appropriate symbol for the Mother of God. All the more so, it can be added, since it also represents fecundity. Dali had already placed an egg at the feet of Leda in Leda Atomica where, although broken, it casts the shadow of a regular ellipse. [��] The face of Dali's Madonna is recognizably Gala's albeit considerably prettified. To use her as his model for the Mother of God seemed to some people the ultimate proof of the painter's cynicism; but once Dali had decided to convert her into a Costa Brava version of Saint Mary of the Sea it would have been out of character for him to change his mind. In The Madonna of Port Lligat the representation of the Virgin, with the gap in her midriff, derives directly from The Weaning of Furniture-Nutrition (1934), which shows a nurse with a hole cut through her back seated on the beach in front of Dali's house. What he did in The Madonna of Port Lligat, he explained later, was to 'sacralize' the earlier image. (Excerpt, pp.504-505); "Dali's main current aim […] was 'to overcome the materialist and atheist elements in Surrealism and incorporate its sources of inspiration in Spanish mysticism, giving it a Christian and mystical content'. As for the Madonna of Port Lligat, he considered it the 'compendium' of his evolution as an artist and an earnest of his new classicism. That summer in Port Lligat he was going to begin his second, much larger version of the work." (Excerpt, pp.511-512)
People Pictured	Dalí, Gala Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint
Location Depicted	Catalonia (Spain) Spain Gerona (Spain : Province)
Material	Oil on canvas Oil paint (pigmented coating) Paint Canvas
Measurements	49.5 x 38.3 cm
Technique	Oil painting (technique) Painting (image-making)
Work Type	Oil paintings Paintings
Repository	Marquette University, Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
Source	Gibson, Ian. The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali. New York; London: W.W. Norton, 1998. (Color plate XXXIV)
Rights	Photograph reproduced in Gibson courtesy: Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art. © Marquette University, Milwaukee.
Digital Publisher	University of Louisville Department of Fine Arts/Allen R. Hite Art Institute Visual Resources Center
Format	image/jpeg
Digital File Name	VRC 2447-26.jpg
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