O Mito Trágico do Angelus de Millet

About Dali, Millet & Angelus:


Influences in the Life of Salvador Dali

The Angelus of Millet

This was a painting that hung outside a classroom in one of Dali's schools, that he was later to remember and include in many of his works, such as The Architectonic Angelus of Millet and The Angelus of Gala. It depicts a man and a woman praying over a harvest, and is seen my many as a symbolic religious piece. However, Dali read many sinister meanings into it. He saw the woman as being aggressive, and described the picture as being about sexual repression rather then humble worship.
He also claimed that if the picture were to be x-rayed it would reveal that the figures were originally praying over the coffin of a child. This was always seen as another manifestation of Dali's bizarre fantasies, but an x-ray did actually reveal a geometric shape, which had been painted over, and resembled a small coffin. Dali's interpretation had been correct.

Source: http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/A585344

The painting was commissioned by Thomas Gold Appleton, an American art collector who was based in Boston, Massachusetts, and who had previously studied with Barbizon painter, Constant Troyon, a friend of Millet's. It was completed during the summer of 1857. Millet added a steeple and changed the initial title of the work, Prayer for the Potato Crop to The Angelus when the purchaser failed to take possession in 1859. Displayed to the public for the first time in 1865, the painting changed hands several times, increasing only modestly in value, since some considered the artist's political sympathies suspect. Upon Millet's death a decade later, a bidding war between the US and France ensued, ending some years later with a price tag of 800,000 gold francs.
The disparity between the apparent value of the painting and the poor estate of Millet's surviving family was a major impetus in the invention of the droit de suite, intended to compensate artists or their heirs when works are resold.^[9]

Info & Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Millet#The_Angelus

More Info Related:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoiac-critical_method
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Millet