The embalmed body of the Spanish surrealist will be exhumed to settle a paternity suit.

A judge in Spain has ordered the embalmed body of surrealist painter Salvador Dalí be exhumed in order to settle a paternity suit, against the wishes of the state-run Gala Dalí Foundation that manages the artist’s estate.

The Spanish painter, known for his iconic surrealist paintings and eccentric behaviour, died in Spain in 1989, at the age of 85. He had no children with his wife Gala (whose real name was Elena Ivanovna Diakonova), and he bestowed his estate to the Spanish state. His remains are buried in a crypt below the stage of the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres in Catalonia.

Pilar Abel, a Spanish astrologer and tarot reader, who was born in 1956, claimed in 2015 that Dalí had an affair with her mother, Antonia, a maid he met in Cadaqués, Spain in the 1950s while she was working in a house belonging to friends of the artist.

Dalí and Antonia “had a friendship that developed into clandestine love”, she claimed in documents presented to the court, according to the ABC.

Spurred by her mother’s claim that Dalí was her father (“The only thing I’m missing is a moustache,” she once told Spanish media), Abel took a DNA test in Madrid in 2007, using hair and skin obtained from the artist’s death mask, with apparently inconclusive results. Another test was taken in Paris with the aid of Dalí’s friend and biographer Robert Descharnes (who died in 2014), using medical samples. Abel claims never to have seen the results of this test, though Descharnes’ son claimed that the test was negative. “There is no relationship between this woman and Salvador Dalí,” he told Spanish media organisation Efe in 2008.

The Madrid court statement said the exhumation was necessary because there were no other biological remains available.

“What [Abel] wants is to have a result of the tests with full guarantee in order to finish with this as soon as possible,” said Abel’s lawyer Enrique Blanquez.

“The Dalí Foundation is preparing an appeal to oppose this exhumation that will be lodged in the coming days,” said the Foundation in a statement.