The Madonna of Port Lligat

The Madonna of Port Lligat is the name of two paintings by Salvador Dalí. The first was created in 1949, measuring 49 x 37.5 centimetres (19.3 x 14.8 in), and is housed in the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. Dali submitted it to Pope Pius XII for approval, which was granted. Dalí created a second painting in 1950 with the same title and same themes, with various poses and details changed, measuring 144 x 96 centimetres (57.7 x 37.8 in); As of 2008, the 1950 Madonna is exhibited at the Fukuoka Art Museum in Japan.

The paintings depict a seated Madonna (posed by Dalí's wife, Gala) with the infant Christ on her lap. Both figures have rectangular holes cut into their torsos, suggestive of their transcendent status. In the 1950 version Christ has bread at the center of his figure. They are posed in a landscape, with a view of Port Lligat, Catalonia seashore in the background, with surrealist details, including nails, fish, seashells, and an egg. The 1949 Madonna has a sea urchin; the 1950 Madonna has a rhinoceros and figures of angels, also posed by Gala.

A poem and book based on The Virgin of Port Lligat by Fray Angelico Chavez, was selected as one of the best books of 1959 by the Catholic Library Association

Salvador Dalí
List of works
Selected
paintings
  • Landscape Near Figueras (1910)
  • Vilabertran (1913)
  • Fiesta in Figueres (1914–16)
  • Port of Cadaqués (Night) (1918–19)
  • The Artist's Father at Llane Beach (1920)
  • The Garden of Llaner (Cadaqués) (1920–21)
  • Cabaret Scene (1922)
  • Cubist Self-Portrait with "La Publicitat" (1923)
  • Self-portrait with L'Humanitie (1923)
  • Portrait of Luis Buñuel (1924)
  • Siphon and Small Bottle of Rum (1924)
  • Portrait of my father (1925)
  • The Basket of Bread (1926)
  • Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood (1927)
  • The Lugubrious Game (1929)
  • The First Days of Spring (1929)
  • The Great Masturbator (1929)
  • The Persistence of Memory (1931)
  • The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table (1934)
  • Morphological Echo (1934–36)
  • Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus (1935)
  • Autumn Cannibalism (1936)
  • Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936)
  • The Burning Giraffe (1937)
  • Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937)
  • Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937)
  • Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach (1938)
  • The Sublime Moment (1938)
  • Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time (1939)
  • The Face of War (1940)
  • Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire (1940)
  • Honey is Sweeter than Blood (1941)
  • Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943)
  • Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (1944)
  • Galarina (1944–45)
  • Basket of Bread (1945)
  • The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946)
  • The Elephants (1948)
  • Leda Atomica (1949)
  • The Madonna of Port Lligat (1949)
  • Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951)
  • Galatea of the Spheres (1952)
  • The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1952–54)
  • Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954)
  • Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity (1954)
  • The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955)
  • Living Still Life (1956)
  • The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1958–59)
  • The Ecumenical Council (1959–60)
  • Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid (1963)
  • Tuna Fishing (1966–67)
  • The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968–70)
  • La Toile Daligram (1972)
  • The Swallow's Tail (1983)
Other artworks
  • Lobster Telephone (1936)
  • Mae West Lips Sofa (1937)
  • Rainy Taxi (1938)
Writings
  • Un Chien Andalou (1929, co-author)
  • L'Age d'Or (1930, co-author)
  • Giraffes on Horseback Salad (1937)
  • Libretto for Bacchanale (1939)
  • The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942, autobiography)
Films
  • Un Chien Andalou (1929)
  • L'Age d'Or (1930)
  • Spellbound (1945, dream sequence)
  • Impressions of Upper Mongolia (1975, narration)
Animated films
  • Destino (1946, completed 2003)
Logos
  • Chupa Chups
Opera
  • Être Dieu (1985)
Costumes
  • costumes for García Lorca's play Mariana Pineda (1927)
Novels
  • Hidden Faces (1944)
Related articles
  • Castle of Púbol
  • Dalí Universe
  • Espace Dalí
  • Dalí Theatre and Museum
  • Salvador Dalí Museum
  • Salvador Dalí (film)
  • Little Ashes
  • Gala Dalí
  • Paranoiac-critical method

Famous quotes containing the words madonna and/or port:

    “In our minds lives the madonna image—the all-embracing, all- giving tranquil mother of a Raphael painting, one child at her breast, another at her feet; a woman fulfilled, one who asks nothing more than to nurture and nourish. This creature of fantasy, this myth, is the model—the unattainable ideal against which women measure, not only their performance, but their feelings about being mothers.”
    —Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)

    “The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)