Messenger in a Palladian Landscape was drawn using pen and ink on pink paper. The drawing is undated but it dates from about 1936. Around this time, Dalí was beginning to incorporate Classical images into his work, although the works as a whole would retain their Surrealist flavor. To the Surrealists, referring back to an older style of painting or subject matter went against their ideals of attempting to find the new, the different, the subconscious images.
    This drawing is a forewarning of the breach that was to occur between Dalí and the Surrealists. He was moving further away from the Surrealist ideals and closer to the Classical ideals that he was to embrace in the Forties with paintings such as My Wife, Looking at Her Own Body. Dalí has made a concessionary Surrealist touch to this work by the addition of an asymmetrical gilt frame, which was probably influenced by the Belgian Surrealist painter Rene Magritte.
    Palladian is a style of architecture that copied the Classical style. It is based on the work of the sixteenth-century Italian architect Andréa Palladio. The landscape of this drawing does indeed show a Palladian architectural style, with use of Classical arches and columns.