A Dali Worthy of Dali

Needle-mustached Salvador Dali raised his enameled walking stick and issued the judgment of a connoisseur. "It is the greatest painting since Raphael," he proclaimed. "As a matter of fact, it is very much like Raphael." He was referring to Santiago el Grande (Saint James the Great), a huge tribute in meticulously brushed oils to Spain's military patron saint. It was painted in five months by the artist that Salvador Dali calls the world's "great genius"--Salvador Dali.

Fashioned after Dali's dream of Santiago rising from the sea, the 13 1/2-ft.-high by 10-ft.-wide canvas shows the saint on a rearing horse. The domelike background represents both a scallop shell (one of the symbols of Santiago) and "a whole cathedral surging from the waters." It is strikingly different from the popular Spanish depiction of Santiago as a plumed knight. While the saint waves aloft a figure of Christ instead of a sword, he throws one enormous foot out to the viewer. "It is my foot," says Dali. "I have saintly feet."

Artist Dali said that his new masterpiece has been bought for more than $60,000 by an American Hispanophile who intends to give it to the Spanish government. Last week the painting was packed up in Manhattan's Knoedler Galleries for shipment to the Brussels World's Fair. There it will hang alone in a special Spanish-pavilion annex. The Franco regime will celebrate the fair's inauguration by issuing a commemorative postage stamp bearing a reproduction of the Dali work. Later, said Catalan-born Artist Dali, the painting will go to Spain's "majestic temple of pure, classic lines, worthy of my work, the Escorial, and there, in its full dignity, it shall guard Philip II."

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