''Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X'' is a 1953 painting by the artist
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
. The work shows a distorted version of the ''
Portrait of Innocent X
''Portrait of Pope Innocent X'' is an oil on canvas portrait by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, executed during a trip to Italy around 1650. Many artists and art critics consider it the finest portrait ever created. It is housed in the Gall ...
'' painted by Spanish artist
Diego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptized June 6, 1599August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of the ...
in 1650. The work is one of the first in a series of around 50
[Zweite (2006), p. 116] variants of the Velázquez painting which Bacon executed throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. The paintings are widely regarded as highly successful modern re-interpretations of a classic of the western canon of visual art.
Of the old masters, Bacon favored
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italian (Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, n ...
,
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally co ...
, Velázquez and
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and e ...
's late works. He kept an extensive inventory of images for source material, but preferred not to confront the major works in person; he viewed ''
Portrait of Innocent X
''Portrait of Pope Innocent X'' is an oil on canvas portrait by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, executed during a trip to Italy around 1650. Many artists and art critics consider it the finest portrait ever created. It is housed in the Gall ...
'' only once. Having deliberately avoided it for years, he only saw it in person much later in his life.
The canvas is one of Bacon's masterpieces, completed when he was at the height of his creative powers. It has been the subject of detailed analysis by several major scholars.
David Sylvester
Anthony David Bernard Sylvester (21 September 1924 – 19 June 2001) was a British art critic and curator. Although he received no formal education in the arts, during his long career he was influential in promoting modern artists, in particula ...
described it as, along with ''
Head VI
''Head VI'' is an oil-on-canvas painting by Irish-born figurative artist Francis Bacon, the last of six panels making up his "1949 Head" series. It shows a bust view of a single figure, modeled on Diego Velázquez's ''Portrait of Innocent X ...
'', "the finest pope Bacon produced".
[Sylvester (2000), p. 88]
Pope series
Velázquez was commissioned by Innocent X to paint the portrait as from life, the pope's motive being to increase his prestige. However, Velázquez did not flatter his sitter and the painting is noted for its realism, being an unflinching portrait of a highly intelligent and shrewd, but aging man.
Bacon never painted from life, preferring to use a variety of visual source material, including photographs both found (including in movie stills, medical text books and 19th century journals) and
commissioned. Equally, Bacon rarely worked from commission, and could portray the pope in an even less flattering light; according to art critic Arim Zweite, "in a sinister manner, in cavernous dungeons, afflicted by an emotional outburst and devoid of any authority".
Although Bacon avoided seeing the original, the painting remains the single greatest influence on him; its presence can be seen in many of his best works from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. In Bacon's version of the 17th century masterpiece, the Pope is shown screaming yet his voice is "silenced" by the enclosing drapes and dark rich colors. The dark colors of the background lend a grotesque and nightmarish tone to the painting. Although a noted bon vivant, Bacon closely guarded his private life, working habits, and thought processes. He produced some 50 paintings of popes, but destroyed a great many that he was unhappy with.
File:Pope Julius II.jpg, Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual ...
, ''Portrait of Pope Julius II
''Portrait of Pope Julius II'' is an oil painting of 1511–1512 by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael. The portrait of Pope Julius II was unusual for its time and would carry a long influence on papal portraiture. From early in its life ...
'', 1511–12. National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...
, London
File:Portrait of Pope Paul III Farnese (by Titian) - National Museum of Capodimonte.jpg, Titian, ''Portrait of Pope Paul III
''Portrait of Pope Paul III'' (or ''Portrait of Pope Paul III Without Cap'') is a 1543 Oil painting, oil-on-canvas portrait by Titian of Pope Paul III, produced during the pope's visit to Northern Italy.[Portrait of Innocent X
''Portrait of Pope Innocent X'' is an oil on canvas portrait by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, executed during a trip to Italy around 1650. Many artists and art critics consider it the finest portrait ever created. It is housed in the Gall ...]
, 1650. Galleria Doria Pamphilj
The Doria Pamphilj Gallery is a large art collection housed in the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj in Rome, Italy, between Via del Corso and Via della Gatta. The principal entrance is on the Via del Corso (until recently, the entrance to the gallery was fr ...
, Rome
File:Titian Portrait of Cardinal Filippo Archinto 1558.jpg, Titian, ''Portrait of Cardinal Filippo Archinto
Filippo Archinto (1495–1558), born in Milan, was an Italian lawyer, papal bureaucrat, bishop, and diplomat. He served as Governor of Rome and then papal Vicar of Rome. He was personally esteemed both by the Emperor Charles V and by Pope Paul I ...
'', 1558. Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin F ...
Description and themes
As with many other of Bacon's popes, the painting is dominated by purple vestments. Bacon's palette changed in 1953, and his paintings became darker, the earlier blues were replaced by velvet purples while his overall tone became more nocturnal. The soft focused and filled in backgrounds disappeared, replaced by flat dark spaces which in some cases were merely the untreated blank canvas.
[Sylvester (2000), p. 81] The pleated curtains of the backdrop are rendered transparent and appear to fall through and encircle the Pope's screaming face.
Although his earlier works, dominated by harsh orange pigments, were hardly cheerful, it has been suggested a reason his palette became darker is that he was scarred by the ending of his tumultuous and sometimes violent relationship with Peter Lacy, whom he later described as the love of his life.
[Brown, Mark.]
Portrait of Francis Bacon's violent lover to be auctioned at Sotheby's
. ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide ...
'', 8 April 2013. Retrieved 28 May 2017 This also in part explains why Bacon began to focus on representations of father figures such as popes - Lacy was a much older and accomplished man and had been the dominant partner.
The man is clearly identifiable as a pope from his clothing.
[Peppiatt (1996), p. 129] He seems trapped and isolated within the outlines of an abstract three-dimensional glass cage. The framing device, described by Sylvester as a "space-frame", features heavily throughout Bacon's later career.
[Sylvester (2000), p. 36]
Cage
Horizontal metal frames
and draped curtains often featured in Bacon's 1950s and 1960s paintings. The motif may have been borrowed from the sculptors
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family an ...
and
Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract art, abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Mo ...
, both of whom Bacon greatly admired; he often corresponded and met with Giacometti. Giacometti had employed the device in ''The Nose'' (1947) and ''The Cage'' (1950), while Moore used similar frames in his 1952 bronze ''Maquette for King and Queen''.
[Sylvester (2000), p. 36] Bacon's use of frames suggests imprisonment to many critics.
Vertical folds
The vertical folds resemble curtains. Veils, curtains, and similar structures appear in Bacon's earliest works, notably the 1949 ''Study from the Human Body'', always in front of, rather than behind, the figure.
[Zweite (2006), p. 208] Their source may be Titian's 1558 ''Portrait of Cardinal Filippo Archinto''.
The folds emphasise the figure's isolation, and were drawn from devices used by
Edgar Degas in the late 19th century, which Bacon described as "shuttering". Bacon said that to him the device meant that the "sensation doesn't come straight out at you but slides slowly and gently across".
[Dawson (2000), p. 53]
Meaning

When asked why he was compelled to revisit Velázquez's ''Portrait'' again and again, Bacon replied that he had nothing against popes, but merely sought "an excuse to use these colours, and you can't give ordinary clothes that purple colour without getting into a sort of false
fauve manner". At the time Bacon was coming to terms with the death of a cold, disciplinarian father, his early, illicit sexual encounters, and a very destructive sadomasochistic approach to sex.
[Barker, Oliver. ]
Francis Bacon, 'Untitled (Pope)'
in conversation with Michael Peppiatt
Michael Henry Peppiatt (born 9 October 1941) is an English art historian, curator and writer.
Biography
Son of Edward George Peppiatt (died 1983), B.Sc, ARCS, of Silver Birches, Stocking Pelham, near Buntingford, Hertfordshire, technical a ...
''. London: Sotheby's
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
, October 23, 2012
Almost all of the popes are shown within cage-like structures and screaming or about to scream. Bacon identified as a
Nietzschean
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) developed his philosophy during the late 19th century. He owed the awakening of his philosophical interest to reading Arthur Schopenhauer's ''Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung'' ('' The World as Will and Repres ...
and atheist, and some contemporary critics saw the series as symbolic execution scenes, as if Bacon sought to enact Nietzsche's declaration that "
God is dead
"God is dead" (German: ; also known as the death of God) is a statement made by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's first use of this statement is his 1882 '' The Gay Science'', where it appears three times. The phrase also ap ...
" by killing his
representative on Earth. Other critics see the series as symbolizing the killing of a father figure.
[Zweite (2006), p. 117] However Bacon balked at such literal translations, and later said that it was Velázquez himself he sought to "triumph over." He said that in the same way that Velázquez cooled
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italian (Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, n ...
, he sought to "cool" Velázquez.
References
Sources
*Arya, Rina. "Painting the Pope: An Analysis of Francis Bacon's Study After Velazquez's Portrait of Innocent X". ''Literature and Theology'', volume 23, No. 1, 2009.
* Davies, Hugh & Yard, Sally, ''Francis Bacon''. (New York) Cross River Press.
* Dawson, Barbara; Sylvester, David. ''Francis Bacon in Dublin''. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.
* Peppiatt, Michael. ''Anatomy of an Enigma''. Westview Press, 1996.
*
Russell, John. ''Francis Bacon''. New York: Norton, 1971.
* Schmied, Wieland. ''Francis Bacon: Commitment and Conflict''. Munich: Prestel, 1996.
*
Sylvester, David. ''Looking back at Francis Bacon''. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
* van Alphen, Ernst. ''Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self''. London: Reaktion Books, 1992.
* Zweite, Armin. ''The Violence of the Real''. London: Thames and Hudson, 2006.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
1953 paintings
Modern paintings
Paintings by Francis Bacon
Innocent X
Pope Innocent X ( la, Innocentius X; it, Innocenzo X; 6 May 1574 – 7 January 1655), born Giovanni Battista Pamphilj (or Pamphili), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 15 September 1644 to his death in Januar ...
Pope Innocent X