One of My Favourite Paintings Salvador Dali's Santiago El Grande By Sandra Bunting

One of My Favourite Paintings Santiago El Grande by Salvador Dali


We have all wanted to soar high up into the clouds like a bird, a dragon or an airplane, or at least be a passenger, to feel the sense of freedom and closeness to the divine. The Spanish painter, Salvador Dali, takes it a step further and places a fortunate figure on a white horse rearing up above the clouds. Looking at the painting, Santiago El Grande, we are left on the ground, small and humble. The sheer size of the painting, 407.67 centimetres high, ensures that we are always looking up at it as if up to heaven itself.
It could be considered more a spiritual painting than a religious one although there are conventional Catholic images. There is a Christ like figure ascending into what we assume is heaven. The figure on the horse is either trying to catch hold of him or is pointing to him. In a bottom corner a Madonna figure looks us straight in the face.
The use of colour adds to the sense of sacredness. The horse dominates the middle of the painting and like a chameleon; his lower body is white to blend in with the clouds and then turns the celestial blue of a heavenly sky. The sky is bound by what seems to be a golden frame forming a globe through which only the Christ figure appears to be able to enter. It is that predominant blue that attracts draws us in and lifts us into another sphere.
At the bottom, what might represent the ordinary human plane; everything is flat, small and inconsequential. The Madonna is draped in earth tones and looks out with a blank expression compared to what we can imagine is the rapt expression of Santiago (St. James). He is the saint whose bones lie in the Galician pilgrimage cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Dali was not without his idiosyncrasies even in this painting. The Madonna bears the face of Gala, his Russian-born lover and later wife. There are many Dali paintings that intrigue or tease. His earlier work is touching, the melting clocks challenging and his sculptures, for my taste, kitsch. He could be a bit of a chancer and exhibitionist at times.
This is the painting I always go back to. Perhaps it has been embedded in my mind since childhood. The painting Santiago El Grande has a strange home in a small provincial art gallery on the east coast of Canada, in Fredericton, New Brunwsick. Its size is exaggerated in the small room, its value often overlooked by local patrons. However, somehow the blues and whites match perfectly outside with the snow and the crisp blue of a Canadian winter.
A sister painting of around the same size is in a gallery in Glasgow. It is more down to earth with its dark somber tones. I’d rather be up there in the skies.