Visage of War

In 1940 Salvador Dalí created his painting Visage of War where eyes and mouth each contain a face, whose eyes and mouth each contain a face and so on. Painting this artwork Dalí thought about Spanish Civil War, and eyes are filled with infinite death. Perhaps Dali decided the infinite horrors of war were better depicted in a bounded canvas through self-similarity, though most certainly he had not been exposed to this as a mathematical concept.

Analogous fractal of order four can be viewed to the right.

Interestingly, a preliminary study (below) of this picture had a face within only one face within the mouth of the largest face.