Figure with Meat
Francis Bacon
FRANCIS BACON, 1953. OIL ON CANVAS.
In 1650, Diego Velazquez was commissioned to paint a portrait of Pope Innocent X. The resulting images is one of the most famous works in art history, but was received with controversy in its day for the accuracy of, and lack of flattering to, its subjects. Almost exactly three hundred years later, Francis Bacon - the great British post-war painter - took Velazquez’s vision and distorted, corrupted, and expanded it in a series of paintings known as the ‘Papal Portraits’. Much as the original work made Velazquez his name, Bacon is still remembered perhaps most strongly for these works. The artist never worked from life, instead drawing from photographs, found images, and visions in his mind, often with all three in combination. The resultant works are journeys into darkness, nightmarish visions where Innocent X becomes a prisoner in a glass box, tormented by brushstrokes and carcasses, his mouth open as he screams in silence. It is unclear if Bacon’s Pope is the butcher of the beef behind him, or an equal with it just waiting to be killed, but the painting grapples with a complex relationship to religion, and an upturning of the art historical order in terror and beauty.