The Maximum Speed of Raphael’s Madonna

This painting is an oil on canvas portrait that measures 81x66 centimetres and it can be seen in the National Museum Reina Sofía, in Madrid. The title of the work is “The Maximum Speed of Raphael’s Madonna”, and it was painted by Salvador Dali in 1954. We can barely see a woman’s face depicted out of strange shapes, spheres of different colours and horns, which are also employed to shape the landscape and the rocks and cliffs in the bottom part of the painting. Her head is crowned by an aureole or a golden halo. She has no body, Dali just painted her like the busts or heads very usual in the art of sculpture. Instead, the low part of the work depicts a rounded fence made out of crosses, spheres and straight lines. It appears to have a door or an entrance in the left and right parts. In any case, the head is floating in the air and it takes up the majority of the painting.

This one could be described as a blue painting, due to the different tones of this colour which we may appreciate both in the clear sky and the immense sea. Some of the spheres are also depicted in several tones of yellow, green and brown. The framing of the scene is quite simple and the only remarkable element that might draw the viewer’s attention is the cliff and rocks which we are familiar with because of dozens of Dali’s paintings, for Cadaqués and Cap de Creus appear very often in the usual landscape of his works. 

The light appears to be coming from the left part of the painting because the colours are brighter in that side. The horizon is also clearly represented separating the sea and the sky with an almost white light. 

This time, the woman’s face is not that of Gala, Dali’s wife and muse, as we may have expected, but the face of a Raphael’s Madonna, as we can tell from the title of the painting. The Renaissance master was greatly admired by Dali, but the Spanish painter combined the classicism and mysticism of the Madonna’s portrait with the modern atomic theory. This is why this painting has been described as “Nuclear mysticism”. The face appears to take shape out of several particles and elements, which represent the discontinuity of matter, the physical theory that claims that all that exist is just material particles moving and floating through and infinite void.

This should come as no surprise knowing the peculiarity and eccentricity of Dali’s work and personality, but it is indeed a curious mixture of very deep religious believes (the virginity of Maria, her sudden apparition, the ideas of immortality and divinity) with recent and ground-breaking scientific discoveries regarding the composition of matter in the universe and the complex laws that rule everything in it.

Another interesting and also recurring element in Dali’s art, is the depiction of rhino’s horns. Of course, the choice of this particular item is far from being accidental, since the author was almost obsessed with the mathematical structure of nature and with the importance of introducing geometrical proportions into his paintings. This horn is an example of the Golden Section, a figure that can be formed following Fibonacci’s sequence. This famous mathematical proportion was supposed to be the main ingredient of beauty and order and can be found in lots of artworks, with the Athenian Parthenon being maybe the most famous one.

This astonishing painting was created the same year as another similar one (Dali Nude, in Contemplation Before the Five Regular Bodies), where we can found again a woman’s face formed out of spherical particles and rhino’s horns. Once again, we can appreciate an inspiring combination of a materialistic scientific theory along with mystical, religious and supernatural figures and events.