Salvador Dalí's Silk Allegory is a painting of an egg and butterflies.
The work, also known as Allégorie de soie, was created in 1950 as a gouache maquette for a poster connected with the International Silk Convention. Dalí presents silk through a fantastical, dreamlike composition featuring a woman, an egg, and brightly colored butterflies. The butterflies reinforce the work's themes of beauty, transformation, and delicacy.
The egg was a recurring image in Dalí's art. He associated eggs with prenatal life, the womb, hope, and love, so its presence is more symbolic than merely decorative. The composition also reflects Dalí's long relationship with fashion, advertising, and commercial design during the height of his international fame.
Viewers sometimes remember insects in the scene generally and answer “bees,” since both butterflies and bees appear in descriptions of related reproductions. The quiz's wording, however, points to the colorful butterflies as the intended subject.