In this series, we look at works from the museum’s collection through the lenses of art history and cultural studies, highlighting the specifics of mosaic panels and the artworks that inspired them. In this article we discuss A. A. Gorbunov’s Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire.
Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire — a mosaic panel from the workshop of A. A. Gorbunov (Sibay) — captivates with the fluid grace of its imagery and the mystery embedded in the original painting’s plot. The work entered the museum’s collection in 2006 and is among the most unusual pieces in our holdings. The mosaic is made of Faizulin jasper, quartzite, and magnesite.
The source for the mosaic is a painting by the Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. His approach to painting is often described as “psychic automatism”: he drew visual images from dreams and fantasies, infusing his canvases with deeply personal meaning. Experiments with avant-garde movements and fidelity to academic principles merged in Dalí’s unmistakable, phantasmagorical style, where rigorous, ultra-real execution becomes a conduit for the chaos of the unconscious.
“To translate inarticulate ravings into the language of physical reality” — this, Dalí said, was his creative credo.
The Gorbunov workshop’s mosaic closely follows the imagery and layout of the original. In the left corner we see a pensive woman—most likely Gala, the artist’s muse—studying two ladies in traditional Dutch dress. Step back and look again: from a distance their silhouettes form the face of an elderly man. This is the hidden Voltaire, specifically the likeness of his well-known bust by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1778). Around Voltaire we glimpse figures of enslaved people; the painting’s fluid, abstract ground evokes a sense of “nowhere and everywhere,” the tremulous space of dreams where an artist’s ideas are born.
Here Dalí uses one of his favourite devices: the double image, in which a single form contains others within it. The artists of A. A. Gorbunov’s workshop have realized this effect in stone.
Dalí described the making of this painting as an attempt to make “the abnormal look normal, and the normal—abnormal.” Slave Market… is a vivid example of his paranoiac-critical method.
The essence of the method was to “release” thoughts buried deep in the subconscious. To achieve this, Dalí claimed, one needed the mind of a madman—unfettered by rational constraints. Yet he did not consider himself insane: his “paranoiac images,” he insisted, proceeded from the rational, that is, the critical part of his consciousness.
The painting is also an imprint of the artist’s unconscious. Dalí’s own note about creating it helps decode the intent:
“Through her passionate love, Gala drew me out of the ironic, bustling world of slaves. From my life, Gala erased both the image of Voltaire and every trace of skepticism.”
Suffused with the unreality of dreams, the canvas speaks to how Gala’s presence helped Dalí delve deeper into his own subconscious and unlock a creativity grounded in unrestrained imagination.
What astonishes in the mosaic counterpart is the masterful choice of materials and the filigree precision of execution. At times the stone’s structure amplifies the sense of fluidity and uncertainty; at others it underscores the strict realism of individual details—opening a new dimension of Dalí’s work. This artistic dialogue, conducted in different materials, seems to pierce time itself.
You can see the mosaic Slave Market… at the Museum of Florentine Mosaic and experience the play of double images for yourself—perhaps even discover personal meanings in this surrealist scene. The panel is displayed in one of our galleries.
