|
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 |
|
Subject |
Women
Spouses
Mothers
Saints
Children
Infants
Symbols
Catholicism
Christianity
Sitting
Floating
Prayer
Hairstyles
Thrones
Chairs
Lemons
Fruit
Food
Eggs
Shells
Crosses
Shadows
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 |
|
Rating |
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