Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
1953 painting by Francis Bacon / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X is a 1953 painting by the artist Francis Bacon. The work shows a distorted version of the Portrait of Innocent X painted by Spanish artist Diego Velázquez in 1650. The work is one of the first[1] in a series of around 50[2] variants of the Velázquez painting which Bacon executed throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.[3][4] The paintings are widely regarded as highly successful modern re-interpretations of a classic of the western canon of visual art.
Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X | |
---|---|
Artist | Francis Bacon |
Year | 1953 |
Type | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 153 cm × 118 cm (60 in × 46 in) |
Location | Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines |
Of the old masters, Bacon favored Titian, Rembrandt, Velázquez and Francisco Goya's late works.[5] 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 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.[6] It has been the subject of detailed analysis by several major scholars. David Sylvester described it as, along with Head VI, "the finest pope Bacon produced".[7]