Pierre de Ronsard, Renaissance poet to royalty, is the author of Les Amours de Cassandre. After years at court he turned his attention to scholarly studies, focusing on his great love of the Greek and Roman classics, and is often depicted in a toga and laurel wreath.

In his rendition of Les Amours de Cassandre, Dalí illustrates the favorite themes of the famous poet and humanist from the French Renaissance. His wonderful portrait of de Ronsard, wearing a toga and a wreath of laurel, is a humorous reminder of the “Carpe diem: of Epicurus.” Love, death and the passing of time, expressed with much refinement and harmony in their association with the cycles of nature, remind us of our vulnerability as mortal beings. In L’Art Poetique, de Ronsard compared poetry with painting: “the ear is the judge of the structure of verse, while the eye is the judge of brushstrokes.” Intuitively, he had opened the way to a Dalínian interpretation.