Images Hidden within a Painting
Salvador Dali was one of the masters of placing hidden meanings, messages or images into his paintings. The combination of a troubled childhood and young adulthood as well as, in some critics opinions, an extremely inventive mind, gave him the inspiration to do something thing very different with his artwork.
This painting, picturing his wife Gala at a window over looking the ocean, holds much more than what can be seen with a passing glance, as was Dali's intention. The main second image that is in the painting, and is easier to see at a distance, is the face and head of Abe Lincoln. Using many different elements of design, including color, negative space, alignment, repetition and patterns, that were already somewhat prevalent in the painting, Dali managed to form a perfect, very large, replication of Lincoln that is initially hidden to the observer.
Also hidden within the painting is a much smaller image of Lincoln near the bottom middle, almost like a hint to take a step back and look at the painting again, literally.
Finally the last thing Dali placed into this painting can be seen in the top mid section, above Galas head. Something many people don't know about Dali is that he hid a lot of religious meaning into his paintings, reasoning for this goes back to his complicated childhood and relationship with his father. If you look above Galas head in the sky you can see what looks to be the sun, but is in fact not. That is the crown of Christ's head (the top of Jesus's head), which is a symbol that can be seen in many of Dali's paintings. He uses alignment and lines here, using Gala's almost straight body structure to form a line pointing directly to the crown of Christ.
(Here are two other views of the painting)
(Far away) (Close up)
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