Abstract:
Twentieth-century British figurative painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) is
perhaps best known for his near-obsessive series of papal paintings inspired by Diego
Velazquez' renowned portrait Pope Innocent X (1650) and created over the course of
Bacon's entire artistic career. The artist's working process plays a crucial role in
understanding this celebrated and varied series. Bacon deliberately avoided Velazquez'
"original" portrait, preferring instead to work with photographic reproductions of the
piece alongside a large collection of seemingly disparate visual material in his chaotic
studio at 7 Reece Mews (South Kensington, London, England). This thesis proposes that
Bacon explored issues of mechanization, fragmentation, and repetition through these
visual juxtapositions in order to offer a critique of artistic and religious institutions.