Description
The "Lady with an Ermine" is a portrait painting widely attributed to the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci.
The painting is one of four portraits of women painted by Leonardo, the other three being La Gioconda, the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci and that of Belle Ferronière.
Cecilia, the young woman in the portrait, played music and wrote poetry. She was appreciated, then, in addition to her beauty, for her talent and intelligence.
She holds an ermine representing some virtues such as balance and tranquility, and balance in time. And while this time passes, Dalí appears with his surreal clocks that suggest that time passes in a very different way.
"The Persistence of Memory" deals with the notion of temporality and memory. When Dalí defaces the clock, he makes us perceive the importance of this small object in life, an object that we would not pay the same attention to as the ermine.