The body of Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali has been exhumed and biological samples taken from it, 27 years after it was embalmed and laid to rest in a museum dedicated to his memory.

 Dali died in 1989 and was buried in the town where he was born 84 years earlier.

Last month, a Madrid judge ruled that the artist’s remains be exhumed to settle a paternity lawsuit brought by Maria Pilar Abel, a 61 year-old tarot card reader.

Pilar Abel has spent the past ten years trying to trying to prove she is Dali’s only child and therefore heir to his fortune which was left to the Spanish state.   She claims to be the product of an affair between Dali and her mother.