On the bottom of his studies for the painting, Dalí explained its inspiration: “In the first place, in 1950, I had a ‘cosmic dream’ in which I saw this image in colour and which in my dream represented the ‘nucleus of the atom.’ This nucleus later took on a metaphysical sense; I considered it ‘the very unity of the universe,’ the Christ!”
In order to create the figure of Christ, Dalí had Hollywood stuntman Russell Saunders suspended from an overhead gantry, so he could see how the body would appear from the desired angle and also envisage the pull of gravity on the human body. The depicted body of water is the bay of Port Lligat, Dalí’s residence at the time of the painting.
(From Wikipedia)
And the piece of paper at the top of the cross symbolizes…?
In the New Testament, Pilate writes “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews” as a sign to be affixed to the cross of Jesus. John 19:21 states that the Jews told Pilate: “Do not write King of the Jews” but instead write that Jesus had merely claimed that title, but Pilate wrote it anyway. Pilate’s response to the protest is recorded by John: “What I have written, I have written.”
It is more commonly depictef as the Latin acronym INRI “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum”.
