Salvador Dalí's famous moustache remains in a perfect state, witnesses to the Surrealist artist's exhumation for DNA testing have revealed.
Narcís Bardalet, Dalí's embalmer, said that upon opening the artist's crypt, the body was found to be exactly as it was when it was interred 28 years ago.
The handlebars of his moustache were still "marking [the time of] 10 past 10" as he wished, he said.
"His moustache remains intact," Bardalet told a local TV station. "It's a miracle. Dalí will be with us for a long time."
The discovery of the moustache was an unintended outcome of the opening of Dalí's tomb, in a crypt beneath the museum that he had designed for himself in his home town, Figueres, which has also become one of the Catalonia region's main tourism destinations.Shinbones taken
The operation was highly controversial and done to settle a paternity claim from a fortune-teller who claims she is the artist's secret love child.
Pilar Abel, 61, also from Figueres, has been attempting to prove she is Dalí's daughter, claiming to have learnt from her mother and grandmother at the age of eight that she was the product of an affair with the married artist.
Despite being dismissed by many as a fraud, Abel won a court order to exhume Dalí's body. A Madrid judge ruled last month that there was no other way to settle the claim.
The artist's two shinbones have been extracted as well as nails and teeth. These will be taken to Madrid for testing before being replaced to preserve the integrity of the body, said Lluís Peñuelas, secretary of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation.
He emphasised that the foundation, which administers Dalí's estate, regards the exhumation as "completely inappropriate" and Abel's claim as "baseless".
The exhumation was far from simple. Cranes were installed to lift the 1.5ton tombstone from Dalí's crypt.
The operation took place at night, with media banned and tarpaulins placed over the top of the building to prevent drones spying from overhead.
Just 15 people were present and all phones and cameras were prohibited.Marta Felip, the mayor of Figueres, said it was "grotesque" that the fortune-teller's claim had been taken so far.
She said the results would be known in the first week of September, and said that if Abel was found not to be the artist's daughter, the foundation and the local government would be seeking to recover their considerable costs.
But if Abel is proved right, she could be entitled to 25% of Dalí's estate, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, which he left to the Spanish state...