L'Elephant Giraffe, 1965 by Salvador Dali

The same elephant with huge spindly legs, also bearing a pyramid on its back, can be seen in the background of the 1944 painting entitled Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee. These elephants also featured heavily in the The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946), where several of them advance upon the cowering figure of St. Anthony, who appears in the foreground holding up a crucifix. The Temptation of St. Anthony would seem to indicate that these distorted elephants are to be interpreted as ungodly, or evil symbols; in fact Dali saw them as existing in a mystical netherregion, halfway to the heavens but still attached to the earth.