STUDY FOR A POPE I

  • STUDY FOR A POPE I, 1961, Francis Bacon

    STUDY FOR A POPE I, 1961

    Oil on canvas, 152 x 119 cm

    ©The Estate of Francis Bacon, image reproduced for educational purposes only. 

    Painted in 1960, Study for a Pope I continues Francis Bacon’s fixation with the papal image as a symbol of authority laid open to doubt. The figure sits inside a sharp, boxed-in space that feels more like a trap than a throne. The robes, in muted reds and purples, hang heavily rather than grandly, hinting at a body under stress rather than one commanding power.
     
    The head is blurred and unsettled. The eyes retreat into shadow, and the mouth looks caught between speaking and failing to do so. Against the surrounding darkness, the Pope appears isolated, held in place by the pointed angles of the chair. Bacon is not celebrating religious status here. He is showing how thin that status becomes when confronted with fear, uncertainty and the simple fact of being human.

  • The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

    - Francis Bacon

    By the early 1960s, Bacon’s Papal studies had evolved into meditations on mortality and control. Study for a Pope I reflects an artist confronting the limits of form and faith, reworking a subject that had become a mirror for his own fears and ambitions. This Pope is neither a man nor an icon, but a presence suspended between being and dissolution, Bacon’s vision of authority reduced to its most human and haunted state.