Study After Velázquez's Portrait Of Pope Innocent X
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''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) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of nat ...
. 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, created 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 (baptised 6 June 15996 August 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the Noble court, court of King Philip IV of Spain, Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He i ...
in 1650. The work is one of the first in a series of around 50Zweite (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 favoured
Titian Tiziano Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), Latinized as Titianus, hence known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italian Renaissance painter, the most important artist of Renaissance Venetian painting. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno. Ti ...
,
Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...
, Velázquez and
Francisco Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Spanish Romanticism, romantic painter and Printmaking, printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Hi ...
's late works. He kept an extensive inventory of images for source material but preferred not to confront the major works in person. Having deliberately avoided it for years, he only saw ''
Portrait of Innocent X ''Portrait of Pope Innocent X'' is an oil on canvas portrait by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, created 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 ...
'' 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'', "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. It is an unflinching portrait of a highly intelligent and shrewd but ageing man. Bacon never painted from life, preferring to use a variety of visual source material, including photographs both found (including in movie stills, medical textbooks 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 colours. The dark background lends 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 (; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), now generally known in English as Raphael ( , ), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of paintings by Raphael, His work is admired for its cl ...
, '' Portrait of Pope Julius II'', 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 more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...
, London File:Portrait of Pope Paul III Farnese (by Titian) - National Museum of Capodimonte.jpg, Titian, '' Portrait of Pope Paul III'', 1545–46 File:Retrato del Papa Inocencio X. Roma, by Diego VelázquezFXD.jpg, Diego Velázquez,
Portrait of Innocent X ''Portrait of Pope Innocent X'' is an oil on canvas portrait by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, created 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 Galleria Doria Pamphilj (often Doria Pamphilj Gallery or Doria Pamphili Gallery in English) is a large private art collection housed in the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj in Rome, Italy, between Via del Corso and Via della Gatta. The principal entr ...
, 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 II ...
'', 1558.
Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is an List of art museums#North America, 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 ...


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, and his overall tone became more nocturnal. The soft-focus 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 were dominated by harsh orange pigments, they 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. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'', 8 April 2013. Retrieved 28 May 2017
This partly 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, Drafter, draftsman and Printmaking, printmaker, who was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced ...
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 sculpture, bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. Moore ...
, 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 Edgar Degas (, ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 183427 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints, and drawings. Degas is e ...
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 and ...
''. London:
Sotheby's Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, 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 Represe ...
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" 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 baulked at such literal translations and said that it was Velázquez himself he sought to "triumph over." He said that in the same way that Velázquez cooled
Titian Tiziano Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), Latinized as Titianus, hence known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italian Renaissance painter, the most important artist of Renaissance Venetian painting. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno. Ti ...
, he sought to "cool" Velázquez.


See also

*
List of paintings by Francis Bacon This is an incomplete list of paintings by the Irish-born British painter Francis Bacon (1909–1992). 1930s ;c.1929–30 *''Painting'' (Oil on canvas, 91.5 cm × 61 cm, Private Collection (long term loan to the Tate Gallery)) ;1933 *'' ...
* '' Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith,'' a United States Supreme Court case about fair use that has a opinion refer to Bacon's transformation between artworks


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 Portraits of popes Cultural depictions of Pope Innocent X Paintings in Des Moines, Iowa