Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening "Elephant and Obelisk" by Gian Lorenzo Bernini facing the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. The smaller pomegranate floating between two droplets of water may symbolize Venus, especially because of the heart-shaped shadow it casts. It may also be used as a Christian symbol of fertility and resurrection. This female symbolism may contrast with the phallic symbolism of the threatening creatures. It has also been suggested that the painting is "a surrealist interpretation of the Theory of Evolution." In 1962, Dalí said this painting was intended "to express for the first time in images Freud's discovery of the
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening them is Dalí's first use of an elephant with long flamingo legs, found in his later compositions such as "The Temptation of St. Anthony". The elephant carries on its back an obelisk, inspired by Bernini’s "Elephant and Obelisk" in Rome's Piazza Santa Maria sopra Minerva. The bayonet, as a symbol of the stinging bee, may represent the woman's abrupt awakening from her otherwise peaceful dream. This is an example of Sigmund Freud's influence on surrealist art and Dalí's attempts to explore the world of dreams in a dreamscape. The elephant is a distorted version of the Piazza della Minerva sculpture