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In 1949, the Irish artist Francis Bacon began a sketch based on the iconic work—Portrait of Pope Innocent X—of Diego Velazquez. At the time, Bacon was likely drawn to Velazquez’s depiction of power incarnate, given the contemporary milieu: like a contagion, fascism and its many discontents had spread throughout Europe, and even though the specter of World War II had receded into background, Stalinism was ascendant in a languishing USSR. With his baleful glare foregrounded amongst an embarrassment of luxury and power (a ruby ring is prominent on his hand, the same color as his lavish silk garb), Velazquez’s pope exudes an aura not altogether different from that of a 20th century dictator.

Bacon’s first sketch modeled on the Velazquez hardly pays homage to the pope. In fact, grotesque subversion is the far more likely intention. What is captured is not power at its apex but at its unraveling, its dissolution, the idea that however omnipotent seeming a ruler, he is ultimately mortal (as Shelley immortally captured in his poem Ozymandias) and the wanton display of power a hollow pretense. The face is ghoulish, three day’s worth of decomposition, and the mouth is wide open, frozen in a scream. The throne in Velazquez’s original, its very sturdiness a match for the gravitas of Pope Innocent X, is now an admixture of the ethereal and grotesque, Bacon using a light, uneven brushstroke. Most noticeably, grey semi-vertical lines give the impression of a translucent curtain falling over the pope, his face somewhat obstructed, somewhat disfigured—not power incarnate, then, but death itself.  

Many have speculated that Bacon’s pope is an altogether different pope than Velazquez’s, a reasonably compelling idea considering the allegations made against Pope Pius XII, who had controversially been referred to as “Hitler’s pope.” But if Bacon’s work was politically motivated, signaling the corruption of the papal seat under Pius XII, Bacon was not forthcoming. For him the sketch and the dozen or so that followed (Bacon painted the last of his “Screaming Popes” in 1961) was an exercise on a common theme, one in which he was clearly invested; yet one that he would eventually come to deride as “silly,” thereby implying it did not have deeper political implications. Whether he really felt that way at some point, though, is moot in this case, considering that his artistic sensibilities might have changed, and even his political allegiances (or at least how he construed events at the time.)

However speculative such an endeavor might be, if we are to understand his intentions, comparing his first sketch of the pope to his subsequent ones, might prove revealing. His second work of the pope, Study After Velazquez, which was painted in 1950, keeps much of the macabre theme alive, yet rescues the face from death so that it is clearly alive, still screaming, but now a discernible human. That visage, though, is neither that of Pope Innocent X nor Pius XII (though it more resembles that found in Velazquez’s portrait.) Some have maintained that the expression is inspired by the female nurse from Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film Battleship Potemkin, who is seen screaming in one scene; and Bacon has done little to disabuse the public of such a notion. This might lead us to believe that he was inserting pop motifs into his work and that the “Screaming Popes” exercise, from a thematic standpoint, was nonsensical, or at least was at odds with the many serious interpretations put forth by scholars. Even then, how to explain his 1951 painting, which shows a pope, sickly-looking but far from dead, the throne encased in what looks like glass, much as Pope Pius XII had been in a picture taken at the time? Replacing a scream is an almost smug expression as though the subject has some great secret of which he will never have to unburden himself. If the first two sketches are more ambiguous as to the subject, this one is anything but (even Pius XII’s sallow cheeks are expertly rendered.) Yet the rest of the sketches are a departure from any political commentary, as the face becomes distorted to the point that it appears Bacon is experimenting with a Cubist aesthetic. It is likely that Bacon had made a political statement but continued to be fixated on the formal elements of the piece, reworking and subverting each rendering at his whimsy, his initial works—and certainly Velazquez’s—receding far into the background.

Which of the following best describes the difference between Velazquez’s portrait and Bacon’s first “Screaming Pope” portrait?

Title

Screaming Popes

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Correct

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Very Hard

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0:04

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1:26

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