Salvador Dali's Biggest Painting Could Be Yours

Salvador Dali's biggest canvas ever is about to hit the auction block, and if you're interested, you'll need quite the space to display it. The painting Dali created in 1939 as a stage backdrop for the Bacchanale ballet at New York's Metropolitan Opera, is roughly 100 feet wide and about 65 feet tall. Made up of four canvases and 13 panels erected in front of a backdrop curtain, the artwork will be sold March 26 at Bonhams' annual Surrealism sale in Paris, where it's expected to bring in between $232,000 and $348,000, per Smithsonian. The work has been described by Bonhams as immersing viewers in Dali's "surreal universe."

The piece centers on a mythic Mount of Venus set against Spain's Ampurdan Plain, with a Raphael-inspired temple in the distance and side panels packed with Dalí trademarks: skulls, skeletal limbs, and vacant eyes. A giant wooden swan, symbolizing sin and desire, originally overlaid the mountain but was destroyed long ago. Dali also wrote a libretto and designed costumes for the ballet, per Artnet News. Last sold by Sotheby's in 2018 for $162,500, the work returns to the market after museum stops in Madrid and Milan. It headlines a sale that will also include pieces by Man Ray, Francis Picabia, André Masson, and Leonor Fini.