Which 1949 Salvador Dalí painting depicts an atomic-age Madonna and Child?

Salvador Dalí’s 1949 atomic-age Madonna and Child painting is The Madonna of Port Lligat. Dalí produced two versions, and the first was completed in 1949.

The composition presents the Virgin Mary and Christ within an arched architectural setting, with separate objects and spaces appearing to float around them. Dalí combined traditional Christian iconography with imagery associated with modern physics and the atomic age.

The title refers to Port Lligat, the small coastal settlement near Cadaqués where Dalí lived and worked. The landscape and light of that area recur throughout his art.

Pope Pius XII approved the first version in 1949, an important fact because Dalí’s religious paintings were part of his postwar turn toward what he called nuclear mysticism. The work is not the same as Dalí’s later Corpus Hypercubus, which uses a hypercube-shaped cross.