Madrid: Forensic scientists and legal experts have begun taking DNA samples from the embalmed body of Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali in a bid to resolve a paternity claim.
Maria Pilar Abel, who was born in 1956 in the northern Spanish town of Figueras - Dali's home town and the place he is buried - claims her mother had an affair with the painter and has been trying to prove she is his daughter for years.
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Salvador Dali's body to be exhumed
Fortune teller from Girona claims to be Dali's daughter, a Spanish court has ordered his body to be exhumed to to settle the paternity claim.
In 2007, she obtained skin and hair from a death mask of Dali and took a DNA test to see if they matched her. However, the results were inconclusive.
She then attempted to find personal items belonging to Dali, who died in 1989 aged 85.
In 2015, she filed a paternity suit seeking help to gather DNA evidence.
In ordering Dali's body to be exhumed, judge María del Mar Crespo said there were no personal objects of the artist to be used in the paternity test, therefore testing his body was necessary.
Speaking the day before the exhumation, Able said she was "very positive".
"I asked my mother if Salvador Dali was my father because I said he was a little bit ugly," she said.
"My mother responded, 'well he had a certain thing about him. Yes, he was your father', she said."
At the time of the alleged affair, Dali was married to his muse, Gala, who died seven years before the painter.
Gala had a daughter from an earlier marriage but the couple had no children of their own.
When Dali died in 1989, aged 84, his body was embalmed by Narcis Bardalet, who told Reuters that attempts to extract DNA were likely to be successful, though "there are also difficulties because (the body) has been embalmed and the formaldehyde could have damaged the nucleus of the cells".
"Getting the samples, that is, molars, teeth, long bones, in order to extract DNA will be easy, because the body will be in a relatively good condition," Bardalet said.
Dali's remains are interred in a crypt under the stage of the domed Theatre- Museum in Figueras, which houses some of his art works and paintings he collected.
The court the samples be taken in June. It may take weeks before the results of the DNA tests are known.
Reuters, wires