Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity
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Image:Dali Young Virgin Auto.jpg Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity is a 1954 painting by Salvador Dalí. During the 1950s, Dalí painted many of his subjects as comprised of rhinoceros horns. Here, the Young Virgin's buttocks consist of four converging horns; "as the horns simultaneously comprise and threaten to sodomise the callipygian figure, she is effectively (auto-)sodomised by her own constitution."<ref>King, Elliott in Dawn Ades (ed.), Dalí (Milan: Bompiani Arte, 2004), 378-379</ref>
The painting, formerly in the collection of The Playboy Mansion, recalls his depiction of his sister Ana María in Figure at a Window (1925), and has therefore been read by some critics as a nasty jab at his sister, punishing her for publishing a biography on Dalí that presented a quite negative point of view;[citation needed] it has also been interpreted as a painting of Gala, though in fact the figure is based on a photograph from a 1930s sex magazine.<ref>Robert Descharnes, Dalí, L’héritage infernal (Paris: Éditions Ramsay/La Marge, 2002), 72.</ref>
In 1958, Dalí wrote, "Paradoxically, this painting, which has an erotic appearance, is the most chaste of all."<ref>Morse, A. Reynolds, Dalí: A Study of His Life and Work (Greenwich: New York Graphic Society, 1958), 81.</ref>
