Sunday Dalí: Angelus, cs. 1932. Oil on wood, 6¼ x 8½ inches. Private collection.

Millet’s Angelus, which features a laboring couple who pause to pray at the sound of the Angelus bell from a distant church, was one of the most popular Christian images in Europe. Dalí was deeply moved by the image, which hung in at the Christian Brother’s school in Figueres, to the point of great emotional pain. In 1932 Dalí wrote The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus, which wasn’t published until the mid-1960s. In the book Dalí essentially analyzes himself as he experiences the emotional layers of Millet’s painting. Then he applies the paranoiac-critical method to his reactions that, along with other memories and associations, make up the painting’s interpretation.

The reason that the left figure has a large hole in his torso comes from a time when Dalí was playing with two rocks on the beach that he organized into the position of the figures in the painting. The left rock was ridden with holes and much smaller than the other. The holes re-occur in nearly every painting on the theme of the Angelus.

The other notable trope is the position of the other figure — the woman. Her pose of prayer is not unlike that of the Mantis religiosa — the “Praying Mantis” — and who’s practice of devouring her mates while they are in the act of copulation was a sexual fascination of Dalí’s.