Literature & Theology, Vol. . No. ", March , pp. doi:10.

1093/litthe/frn039 Advance Access publication 10 September 2008

PAINTING THE POPE: AN ANALYSIS OF FRANCIS BACONS ZQUEZS STUDY AFTER VELA PORTRAIT OF INNOCENT X
Rina Arya
Abstract In many discussions of his work Bacon is disparaging about religion, and more specically, Christianity. And yet, in spite of his unequivocal stance, throughout his oeuvre he was relentlessly drawn towards the symbols of the Christian tradition, especially the motif of the Crucixion and the Pope. In zquezs painting of Pope Innocent X (1650) this article I want to compare Vela zquezs Portrait of Innocent X (1953) in order to and Bacons Study after Vela assess the reasons that explain Bacons obsession with the image of the Pope. His descriptor study after in the title qualies his aims, which entailed zquez painting and reappropriating it for his own deconstructing the Vela ends. I think it tting to describe Bacons version as being a mirror-image or zquezs. And although Bacon virulently photographic negative of Vela critiques the institutions of the Church, he is dependent upon the wealth of theological sources for his imagery as well as the position of theism, which alone gives credence to his practice.
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IN MANY discussions of his work, Francis Bacon is disparaging about religion, and more specically, Christianity. In his various denigrations he employs the term anodyne1 to refer to the effects that the Christian religion has on peopleit alleviates suffering by making it purposeful. Elsewhere he remarks how faith is a fantasy, religion is a way of disciplining people, and governments use religion to control the people.2 And yet, in spite of his unequivocal stance, throughout his oeuvre he was relentlessly drawn towards the symbols of the Christian tradition, especially the motif of the Crucixion and the Pope. In this article I want to account for his obsession with the papal image by zquezs Portrait of Innocent X (1953). This specically focusing on Study after Vela study, his famous depiction of a screaming Pope, encapsulated many of the central themes in Bacons work. Here he can be seen critiquing, among other things, the tradition of papal portraits, which immortalised and eternalised the sanctied gure of the Pope. Bacons interpretation is diametrically opposed to such sanctication; it is, rather, located within the context of death. In his
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zquez, Pope Innocent X, 1650 (140 120 cm), Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome. Diego Vela

oeuvre Bacon discussed the omnipresence of death in life, where he stated that death was not to be conceived of as a state that occurs after life, but as interpenetrable with life, as part of the human condition. His lack of religious belief dispensed with the promise of an afterlife, and he approached the body as a purely physical entity, which disintegrates over time. This is seen in his rendition of the papal gure. The Pope is not exempt from death, and, in his interpretation, we witness the death of the symbol of the Pope who screams as his public persona falls apart and his corporeality is revealed. The symbol of the scream is multilayeredit denotes not only the death of the papal symbol, but the death of an art historical tradition, the death of God and the death of the self. The screaming Pope encapsulates the existentialist predicament in the absent presence of God, and the Popes scream mirrors the scream of the viewer, who screams at the void. In Bacons oeuvre the papal paintings have as their origin the Heads, which are, as the classication indicates, the study of the head (and often shoulders) of an individual3 depicted within an enclosed frame/space. In these images Bacon aimed to explore the theme of psychological collapse.

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zquezs Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953 (153 118 cm) Francis Bacon, Study after Vela Des Moines Art Center Nathan Emory Cofn Collection # The Estate of Francis Bacon / DACS 2008.

European portraiture includes a great number of portraits of individuals in rooms where the viewer gets a sense of not only the presence of the sitter but also that of the painter. By removing the presence of the painter the sitter would experience what it felt like to be truly alone in a room, and this is what Bacon explored in his Heads. Russell comments on Bacons innovations:
Not merely is the subject not alone in a portrait by Titian or Ingres, but he is notalone [sic] in the highest possible degree: he is under inspection . . . The sitter is busy: busy posing . . . What painting had never shown before is the disintegration of the social being which takes place when one is alone in a room which has no looking-glass. We may well feel at such times that the accepted hierarchy of our features is collapsing, and that we are by turns all teeth, all eye, all ear, all nose.4

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The Heads preoccupied Bacon in the late forties (194849) and were supzquezs painting, planted by the Popes in the 1950s. From the rst study of Vela 5 zquez, dated at 1950, and for the next twenty years Bacon Study after Vela painted more than forty-ve paintings of the Pope. He would nally abandon the subject matter in 1962.6 zquezs painting of Pope Innocent I want to open up a dialogue between Vela zquezs Portrait of Innocent X in order to X (1650) and Bacons Study after Vela explore reasons for his obsession with the image of the Pope. This will be done by evaluating Bacons attitudes towards religion, authority and societal norms. And secondly, I will explain his motives for painting the Pope emitting a scream. The tradition of papal painting, and more specically the enthroned Pope, was inaugurated by Raphael and inherited by Titian. Steffen documents the shift of portrayal from the Renaissance idealisation of the symbol of the Pope to the more majestic and formal state portraits of the seventeenth and eighteen centuries, where the Pope was active in state affairs, and was, as Zweite zquezs Pope Innocent X describes, worldlylooking.7 It was specically Vela which served as Bacons starting pointhe was said to be transxed by zquezs painting, calling it one of the greatest portraits ever.8 In spite Vela of his fascination with the image, during his visit to Rome in 1954, where he zquez original, which was in the spent some weeks, he declined seeing the Vela Galleria Doria Pamphili, and knew it only in reproduction.9 Peppiatt remarks how Bacon kept various reproductions of the painting to hand and pinned one in pride of place on his studio wall;10 the series of photographs which Sam Hunter took in Bacons studio in 1950, and published two years later, zquez image.11 bears testimony to the latters obsession with the Vela

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I. THE SYMBOL OF THE POPE

zquez image The symbol of the Pope may have been localised in the Vela within Bacons aesthetic, but given the socio-political context of Bacons life, the symbol can be said to resonate on a number of different levels. On an ecclesiastical level, Bacon would have been aware of the religious and social signicance of the gure of the Pope. Born in Ireland (Dublin) to English parents, religion was an unavoidable part of the English experience within Irish society because of the tensions between Protestants and Catholics. Bacon was brought up during the Sinn Fein movement and once the Irish Republican Army was formed in 1919 guerrilla warfare broke out. During his boyhood Bacons understanding of religion was marked by social and religious tension and isolationbeing both English and Protestant he represented the minority. Religion also contributed to his sense of physical danger.

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He lived for a time with his grandmother who married the Commissioner of Police for Kildare, and recalls how we lived in a sandbagged house and, as I went out, these ditches were dug across the road for a cart or horse-and-cart or anything like that to fall into, and there would be snipers on the edges.12 These formative experiences led to a conation between violence and religion, and by extension, the Pope, as the incarnation of the Catholic Church, would have been viewed within this context of opposition and conict. The gure of the Pope can also be interpreted from the perspective of psychoanalysis. The etymological root of the word Popepapa13associates it with the gure of the Father. Bacon had a turbulent relationship with his own father, who had high esteem for traditional masculinity and the values it espoused. His father was vehemently opposed to two aspects of his sons identityhis homosexuality and his desire to be a painter. When the sixteenyear-old Francis was found dressed up in his mothers underwear he was expelled from the family home.14 Two years later Bacons father made one last attempt to straighten out his wayward son by placing him in the hands of a family friend, who was to accompany him to Berlin. This was to prove disastrous since the friend encouraged and even shared Bacons sexual predilections. The sons relationship with his father was complicated by erotic fascination, which Bacon claimed his father had awakened in him. Bacon recalls that he scarcely understood his feelings of sexual attraction towards his father at the time, and recognised the truth only after he had been broken in by his fathers grooms and stable lads15 on his fathers instruction. This instruction demonstrates the brutally sadistic side of the fatherson relationship. Arguably, Bacon worked through his troubled relationship with his father in his paintings of the Pope: he enhanced the signicance of the Pope zquezs grand depiction of Innocent X, whilst simultaneously by echoing Vela subverting him through vitriolic treatment. From a Freudian perspective Bacons perpetual obsession with the papal image alludes to an inverted Oedipal Complex, where it is not the mother but the father who is revered in all the fear that he evokes. Bacons homoerotic turn to the gure of the Pope might here represent a therapeutic means for him to reverse the roles within the sadomasochistic paternal relationship, so that instead of his father inicting pain, Bacon reclaims his autonomy. This autonomy had been suppressed in Bacons youth when his father frustrated Bacons artistic and homosexual leanings. Bacon exercised his new-found power by representing his father as a gure that is positively haunted, trapped and conned within the claustrophobic and airless pictorial space, akin to a decompression chamber. Ironically, Bacon used the very medium that his father had denied himpaintas the instrument with which to torture him. The Popes utterance of a scream could be viewed from a Lacanian perspective as a reversal of the transition from the imaginary stage of

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pre-language to the symbolic state of language, which, considering his role as religious spokesman, is deeply ironic. Even after his fathers death Bacon clearly remained haunted by him; his father exerted a forceful presence in his absencein psychoanalytical terms, the return of the repressed. Peppiatt observes how, around 1950, although Bacons father had been dead for ten years, his presence extended well beyond the grave, but the son had to some extent freed himself from its shadow by bringing out a succession of Heads howling their rage and pain.16 The Heads
emboldened him aesthetically and emotionally over the next few years to confront the image of paternal authority par excellence, the Pope, and execute a magnicent series of paraphrasesor parodiesof Velazquezs portrait of Innocent X; rarely can a father gure have been pilloried and rejected with such ferocity.17

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The stance of homophobia as symbolised by Catholicism was another reason for Bacons anathema towards the papal gure. Bacon obstreperously resisted being controlled by such a gure and the vitriolic treatment of the papal image can even go so far as being an attempt to kill the Father. Bryson elucidates this idea:
The regime of masculinity is revealed as, in the end, a murderous violence . . . The gure of the Father (everyones father, yours, minenot the real father, but the image or force behind him) is contemplated in the form of a supreme power that is vanquished by the son in a drastic coup detat.18
ZQUEZS POPE INNOCENT X II. VELA

The portrait is painted in the vigorous manner of Titian. Davies traces the zquezs Pope Innocent X back to Titian and draws parallels roots of Vela between the pose of Titians Portrait of Filippo Archinto (circa 155162) and zquezs portrait of the Pope, observing how the pose of the Pope, espeVela cially the position of the left arm and the ringed left-hand of the sitter, zquez portrait.19 Majestically seated on the gilded papal anticipated the Vela throne, the Pope is depicted in traditional papal robeswearing a white cassock covered with a red velvet mozzetta and a camauro. He also wears the traditional Fishermans Ring and his coat of arms showed the dove of peace carrying an olive branch in its beak.20 The Pope is featured in all his glory, which is enhanced by the sumptuous rendering of the fabrics of the clothing and other paraphernalia, such as the velvet curtain and the ornate throne, which adheres to the fashion of the Baroque. These robes of ofce, which link him to St Peter, both simultaneously acknowledge this human being and dehumanise him in the sense that it is what he is and not who he is that grants him authority. The Pope must relinquish all sense of self-identity

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(including his family name), and exists only as a public persona. Steffen zquezs portrayal is conventional, as it argues that although in one sense Vela depicts the Pope in line with the dictates of ofcial representation, it is also able to impart a sense of the individual characteristics of the Pope.22 And so incisive is the characterisation that Innocent X was said himself to declare that he felt that it was troppo vero (too truthful).23 And it is this ne balance of conventional codes of acceptability, whilst being able to add the nuances of zquez from other Court Painters.24 individuality, which distinguishes Vela The Pope is oriented to the right side of the picture and is gazing to his left. This placement, of being at an angle to the viewer, makes him occupy a larger portion of the viewers visual eld than if he was confronting the viewers face on. This extended amount of space grants him a commanding presence and his gaze to the side of the viewer conveys his detached and aloof stance; he is not deferring to the viewer but expects us to defer to him. There are two other factors that increase the sense of detachment. Schmied observes how the gilded back of the throne in the painting operates as a frame: it focuses attention on the head by demarcating it from the background, and this suggests a picture within a picture.25 The doubling up of throne-as-frame is an effective device and accentuates the formality of the representation. Furthermore he looks out with a stern authoritative expression that is unnerving for the viewer because the eyes do not innocently stare out at the viewer; they scrutinise. The sternness of his facial expression is balanced by his composed seated gesture. Collectively, his expression and the array of symbols in the painting convey Innocents temporal and spiritual rule. zquezs Pope is conveyed by much Bryson argues that the power of Vela more than the articles of his status, by something far more deep-rooted. Bryson claims that power does not lie on the surface, it shapes esh and bone, and similarly, power is always incarnate and never abstract26. The emphasis on the naturalisation of power and status in Innocent X was particularly apt for the year in which the painting was executed, 1650, which marked the height of the Counter-Reformation when papal power was at its greatest, and which also was the Jubilee year, when Rome was host to hordes of pilgrims, painters and sculptors from all over Europe.27 zquez as Court Painter was in a privileged position as he was able to Vela document the Pope at his height (before the papacy lost its political power).

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ZQUEZS PORTRAIT OF POPE INNOCENT X III. STUDY AFTER VELA

Bacon described great art as being a way of keeping abreast of cultural shifts and responding to the contemporary in ones own ageyou see, I believe zquezs Portrait that art is recording: I think its reporting.28 His Study after Vela

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of Pope Innocent X was his interpretation, or what Bryson describes as his zquezs Pope Innocent X. At a cursory glance revision,29 after Vela Bacons image contains all the articles of the Popethe papal throne and his vestments. It also contains echoes of the Grand Manner, namely in, as Alloway points to, the size of the canvas, the placing of the gures depicted.30 However, from a formal and thematic perspective there is also major difference. This is embodied in the dening featurethe scream, which has the effect of polarising the two paintings. In the Bacon example the Pope emits a scream which shatters the surface of the painting and divests the papal image of its power and authority. There are a number of reasons that may account for the scream of the Pope. Extending the earlier statement about Bacons view of the role of art in society, the screaming Pope could be reacting to postwar existential angst, which was exemplied in Nietzsches declaration of the death of God. If God is dead, then the Pope is exposed as an empty symbol. By drawing on zquezs image, which, to reiterate, glories the Pope at the pinnacle of his Vela religious power, Bacon is instead charting the redundancy of the symbol. In her essay Web of Images, Ades examines the role of the mouth as the mouth `-vis Batailles entry on La Bouche (in the Critical Dictionary) and focuses vis-a on the fact that it is through the mouth that our most concentrated experiences of agony or ecstasy are physiologically expressed, and also that in this expression the human draws particularly close to the animal.31 Ades offers the following explanation of Bacons rendition of the scream, which incidentally she refers to as a cry32:
Perhaps his idea was to test one of the greatest portraits ever painted, of a man set highest above his fellow men (the archetypal father, verging on the divine) in the grip of a feeling so intense that the only expression of it brought him close to the beasts.33

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Bacons humiliation of the Pope was two-fold. He wanted to debase the exalted status of the Pope by paralleling him with the beast. He may also have been exploiting the sexual implications of the mouth, which Freud identied as the rst organ to emerge as an erotogenic and libidinal zone. In his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucixion (1944) Bacon explores this sexual theme in the transposition of the genital to the buccal region. Bacon reprimands the Pope for condemning homosexuality by depicting him as being oppressed by carnal desires. The scream connotes the trapped sexuality that the Pope endures. From a biographical perspective Bacon could be seen as enacting his own torture on the father, who screams in pain as his image collapses. Another interpretation is to read the scream as issuing from the mouth of Bacon himself. It is plausible that the

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scream was an articulation of Bacons rage at the authority of the Catholic Church, in particular its position on the issue of homosexuality. Another possibility is that in the wide-opened gesture of the scream, Bacon was commenting on his lifelong battle with asthma and encapsulating this in the image of one gasping for air. Harrison remarked that although asthma wasnt an obvious focal point in his work, partly because of Bacons own attitude he bore it with a habitual stoicismBacon nevertheless was fully aware of the perpetuity of this condition, and stated, its been with me longer than painting has and its a daily experience.34
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ZQUEZ TO BACON: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS IV. FROM VELA

Davies consolidates the differences between the two images in the following zquez portrayed the Pope ex cathedra, Bacon captured him phrase: while Vela in camera.35 It was customary for bishops to preach from the cathedra (the bishops throne) and the expression ex cathedra conveys an infallible authorzquezs portrayal of the Pope ex cathedra ity of the pronouncement.36 Vela means that he was depicted in all his uncompromising authority, in his public role as spiritual leader. This contrasts with Bacons portrayal in camera, which translates as in the chamber.37 In legal terms it refers to private sittings to cases heard, not in open court, but in closed court or a judges private room.38 By placing him thus Bacon is removing the legitimacy of the zquez is (ex cathedra) dictate and is placing the Pope under his own scrutiny. Vela dehumanising the Pope (the Pope known for what he represents and not for who he is as a person, the Pope rst and foremost as a symbol) and Bacon is then re-humanising him by depicting him as a man in a state of psychological collapse as his public guise falls apart. Bacon bifurcates the Pope into Pope and Popeas-man. The viewer is privy to this incompatibility of identities, which is reected in the image of the screaming Pope. This image can be described as Surrealist, where Surrealism involves the juxtaposition of two incompatible realities on the same visual planein this case, the scream of a Pope. Steffen compares the two interpretations of the Pope and suggests that zquezs Pope a step further by making Vela zquezs Bacons Pope takes Vela introverted but dangerously restrained Pope positively explode. He brought into the open everything that was hidden and suppressed in the gure.39 Brysons interpretations are similar, with the exception that he downplays zquezs image. Bryson refers to Bacons surgical operation the tension in Vela zquez and discusses how Bacon dismantles of the neutralness of Vela zquezs ascesis.40 What both Steffen and Bryson fail to see is that Vela zquez portrays the Pope at the height of his papacy whilst Bacon is Vela more intent on capturing the moment at which the papacy collapses and

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the Pope is exposed. I suggest that Bacons Pope is the negative inverse of the zquez example; we are faced with what appears to be a photographic Vela zquez example the Pope fulls all the criteria of his ofce; negative. In the Vela from his attire to his facial expressions, the viewer is facing the archetypal image of the Pope. This is deconstructed in the Bacon example, where the zquezs Pope Pope is satirised, from his appearance to his articulation. Vela poses in role, that is, ex cathedra imparting a sense of condence and authority. He is formal and yet relaxed in his role. The Pope in Bacon, however, is vulnerable and under judgement. Sitting bolt upright with balled sts41 he awaits his doomed fate. The shift of perspective also contributes to their zquezs Pope is depicted according to the rules varying interpretations. Vela of Renaissance perspective which were based on a xed central viewpoint. This xes the sitter at a comfortable distance from the viewer. In the Bacon image, space does not conform to this model. Schmied describes Bacons version of pictorial space as a nexus of interlocking spatial systems that are in continued conict but also have a mutually reinforcing effect.42 These spatial systems are created by the architectonic frames (space-frames), which are continuous with the papal throne and create the sensation of incarceration and isolation. Another signicant difference between the two paintings is in the treatment zquezs image the robes are highly of the trappings of papal power. In Vela symbolic; the velvety-rich red cape symbolises the colour of the martyrs and is coupled with the more lightweight but voluminous white cassock, which refers to Christ at the Transguration. The splendour of the materials and colours convey the authority and magnicence of the sitter. And what he is sitting on, the throne, is the supreme symbol of papal power. All the features convey his position as set apart, as holy. zquez In the Bacon image the viewer is faced with a reversal of the Vela image. Instead of endowing weight and substance to the Pope the translucent garments disgure the presence of the Pope. This is further enhanced by the device of vertical striations (which Bacon refers to as shuttering), which run from the top to the end of the lower body and the cassock. Other striations are out at the bottom43 of the painting and run from two sides towards the gure and the centre of the painting. The striations stretch and cut through the gure, exacerbating his claustrophobia. They also create a veillike effect, which masks and distorts his identity, whilst also paradoxically making it very immediate. In the process of viewing, Bacon is removing/ stripping away this veil to reveal the disintegration of the Pope. The viewer does not witness the Pope in power but in his symbolic demise. The striations of the veil therefore can be interpreted as attempts to rupture the identity of the Pope.

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The use of colour is plausibly one of the greatest differences between the zquez painting is painted in soft muted tones, which two paintings. The Vela convey the lustre of the paraphernalia and the status it represents. The colours in the Bacon image are remarkably stark and lack warmth. The red cape from zquez is transformed into a garish bluish-purple cape in the Bacon. the Vela This transformation can be viewed as an attempt to satirise the resonance of the symbol and the specicity of the colour. He turns a venerable symbol into what Davies refers to as some form of ludicrous fancy dress in a Genet play.44 The starkness of the complementary colours (with the purple against the yellow throne) adds to the sense of discomfort that the Pope experiences. The white cassock in the Bacon example is endowed with a luminosity, which makes it seem almost ghostlike. It also appears to be blood-spattered, which adds to the drama of the scene. In addition, the gilded and stately zquez image is transformed into a translucent bright throne in the Vela yellow chair, which is cold, clinical and literally unsupportive of the weight of the Pope. The juxtaposition of the dark colours and glaring highlights45 which icker incandescently is unsettling and visually disruptive. Another visually incongruous feature is the facial expressions and general zquez image demeanour of the two Popes. The face of the Pope in the Vela and his relaxed condent hand gestures impart the impression of authority, integrity and wisdom. In contrast, the ghostly white face of the screaming Pope is elongated and differs from the strong angularity and eshiness of the zquez face. Bacons Pope does not possess the strength and power of the Vela zquez Pope. Instead we have the petried soundless scream emerging Vela from the blackness of the mouth. The hands are fearfully bolted to the chair, which has been likened to an electric chair,46 and the Pope looks as if he has seen a ghost, or some horric sight that has induced temporary paralysis.

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V. CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS: RESPONSES TO THE VOID

Earlier I outlined a number of different possibilities which account for why the Pope is screaming. All the reasons stated can be framed within a relationship of cause and effect. For example, the Pope as representative of Bacons biological father screams because of the torture chamber that he has now been placed in by the murderous son. Or, the Popes scream is the effect of his trapped sexualityhe is oppressed by the frailties of the esh. In Logic of Sensation (2003 [1981]) Deleuze promulgates a very different analysis of the scream, emphasising that the Pope is not screaming at anything and there is no object which causes the scream. He is screaming at nothing; he is screaming at the void. Rather like Kurtz in the Heart of Darkness, the exclamation of

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the horror! the horror!, has no referent. A similar charge can be levelled at Munchs The Scream (1895), where there is no external source that is causing the central gure to scream. However, the use of pathetic fallacy here prevents (the background of) nature from being conceived of as a void. The scream of the gure is absorbed by the organic swirls, which constitute the sky and surrounding landscape. In this example nature operates as a buffer, and the angst of the gure is transported and communicated through the expressive lines of the road and landscape. The scream may be emitted from the individual gure but it reverberates throughout nature, causing the effect of expanzquezs Portrait sion and unity. In contrast, the scream in Bacons Study after Vela of Pope Innocent X cannot be communicated to its surroundings and instead echoes in the vortex of contracting space.48 This vortex of contracting space is the void left by the realisation of the death of God. The Pope is screaming in response to the belief that the theological concept of God is dead. A. The Death of God and Existentialism Davies draws a direct parallel between a passage from Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra (18831885) and Bacons papal images. He states how:
Bacons papal images support the Nietzschean declaration and may be viewed as visual equivalents of the pathetic gure of the last pope featured in the section entitled Retired in Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra.49

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In Retired from Service (in Part Four of Zarathustras Discourses in Thus Spoke Zarathustra) the Pope approaches Zarathustra, and when he learns of the death of God, he declares: I am retired from service, without master, and yet I am not free, neither am I merry even for an hour, except in memories . . . . I am the last pope!50 The Pope needs (the belief in) God to validate his identity as Pope and, in the absence of God, seeks another master, which leads him to Zarathustra. The tragedy of Bacons papal images is that the individual has relinquished himself completely to a stiing system of beliefs51 and one which following the death of God has revealed itself to be untenable. The Pope screams in realisation of his fate. As Peppiatt observes, the scream was the moment of truth, the moment at which all pretence and falseseeming fall away.52 Bacon is staging the announcement of the death of God rather in the manner that Nietzche undertook through the guise of the madman, in The Gay Science (1882Book 3, Section 125), where the madman runs into the market place in the early hours of the morning, and announces the demise of God. The effects of the kinetic ickering53 on the gure of the Pope combined with his isolated placement on the throne gives the impression to the viewer that what we are bearing witness to is a spectacle, a great event, a possible re-enactment of the story of the madman.

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The consequences of the death of God and subsequent ramications on the identity of the Pope have encouraged parallels to be drawn between the papal (or other ecclesiastical) gures and existentialist thinking,54 which were popular during the 1940s and 50s. This has further been enhanced by the congurations of isolated gures in windowless spaces, which predominate in tranger (1942) Bacons work, and recall literary equivalents such as Camus LE `-vis Russell the innovations of and Sartres Huis Clos (1944). I proposed vis-a Bacons portraiture which depicted the disintegration of the social being and exposed the individual as entirely on their own, faced to contemplate the dissolution of the self. This existentialist predicament can be applied to many of Bacons solitary gures, who are isolated in claustrophobic interiors. However, if the given condition of existentialism is the focus on the self then zquezs Portrait of Pope an existentialist reading is denied in Study after Vela Innocent X, because the Pope cannot be conceived of in terms of a self. The existential possibilities of liberation and the construction of meaning through existence are not feasible here, and the only option remains to acknowledge the abandonment of meaning and sense. The Popes scream is abyssalit is the zquezs Portrait of Pope Innocent X cannot void itself. Although Study after Vela be described as an example of existentialism, Bacon was, undoubtedly, working within a cultural climate of existentialist thought. Yet if he employs some of the metaphors of existentialist thought they are for radically different ends. B. A Deleuzian Reading Bacon makes a distinction between the violence in his life (actual violence) and the violence in painting.55 In Logic of Sensation Deleuze develops this distinction. He describes the violence of war as the violence of representation ) which is to be contrasted with the violence of (the sensational, the cliche sensation56, which is the violence which emerges through the paint. Deleuze states that what interests Bacon directly is, a violence that is involved with line and colour: the violence of a sensation . . . a static or potential violence, a violence of reaction and expression.57 The violence is caused through movement, where the movement is not external but comes from within, such as the spasm of a sneeze or the violence of a hiccup.58 He describes the violence that he is attempting to convey in the following terms:
In the end, the maximum violence will be found in the seated or crouching Figures, which are subjected to neither torture nor brutality, to which nothing visible happens, and yet which manifest the power of the paint all the more.59

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The key phrase in the above description is nothing visible happens. Deleuze notes that there is nothing that might cause horror. The Pope screams before the invisible.60 The transparent striated curtain reinforces the fact that there is

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nothing in front of the Pope that is causing him to scream. And since the scream is object-less, so to speak, it has the effect of heightening the level of horror. [T]he horror is multiplied because it is inferred from the scream, and not the reverse.61 Bacon always stated that he wanted to be able to paint the scream more than the horror62 and this example fulls his aspirations because the horror is experienced through the scream. We are not distracted by the horror but it is incremental to the power of the scream. It is a similar image to that of the screaming nurse from Sergei Eisensteins lm The Battleship Potempkin of 1925, which Bacon claimed was an important source in his work. The nurses mouth was a vivid example of the kind of deformation under stress that Bacon was aiming to parallel in paint: the great soundless zquezs Portrait of Innocent O of the mouth.63 In the context of Study after Vela X, the contortion of the mouth into a scream has the effect of distorting the stability of the body. The restraint embodied through the poise and grandeur zquez image is subverted entirely in the Bacon example, where all in the Vela we are left with is the scream. Deleuze describes the relationship between the zquez in the role of documentarian: two painters, and places Vela
zquez was undoubtedly the wisest of the classical painters, possessing an Vela immense wisdom: he created his extraordinary audacities by holding rmly to the coordinates of representation . . .64

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And he subsequently places Bacon as responsible for hysterizing65 all the zquezs painting. Bacon distorts the reserve that Vela zquezs elements of Vela Pope holds into a mania that is conveyed by the scream and articulates the fear of the internal violence of the body. Deleuze describes the dynamic between the internal forces (the spasms) and the outer body as being in continual tension. The spasms can be interpreted literally, as deformations of the esh, but are, as Deleuze discusses, also interpreted metaphorically as desperate zquezs Portrait of Innocent X attempts to escape the body. In Study after Vela the turbulence of the body resolves itself through the insistence of the scream which survives the effacement of the body.66 What we as viewers are bearing witness to is an extreme point of cosmic dissipation, in a closed but unlimited cosmos.67 The framing down of the image of the Pope in the space-frame accentuates the sensation of disintegration because it has the effect of focusing the viewers attention to what is happening within the connes of the frame. Russell describes the systematic disintegration of the Pope: . . . we may feel at such times that the accepted hierarchy of our features is collapsing, and that we are by turns all teeth, all eye, all ear, all nose.68 This sense of disintegration conveys one of the central themes within Bacons work, which is the transience of representation. In what can be described as Derridean, representation cannot halt the workings of time but can only expose the workings of death.69

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This claim is enforced by the cultural awareness of the death of God, which eliminates the possibility of an ultimate guarantor. According to Bacon, life and death are inextricably entwined and the experience of dying or death is conveyed when the body is at the point of its greatest vitality. Bacons Pope is expressed at this peak moment of intensity where life and death coincide in the scream. Deleuze refers to Kafka to describe this notion of impending doom:
It was Kafka who spoke of detecting the diabolical powers of the future knocking at the door. Every scream contains them potentially. Innocent X screams, but he screams behind the curtain, not only as someone who can no longer see, who has nothing left to see, whose only remaining function is to render visible these invisible forces that are making him scream, these powers of the future. That is what is expressed in the phrase to scream at not to scream before or about, but to scream at death which suggests this coupling of forces, the perceptible force of the scream and the imperceptible force that makes one scream.70

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zquezs painting as a reference Although Bacons painting clearly uses Vela point, in terms of the paraphernalia and layout, the qualier study after in the title is revealing and indicative of Bacons intentions. The nal outcome of zquezs image of Pope Innocent X is the complete Bacons study after Vela zquez Pope. In terms of visual semiotics, Vela zquezs antithesis of the Vela painting is a naturalistic rendition of Innocent X. In contrast, in the Bacon image, the viewer is faced with a symbolic index of pain, the scream.

VI. CONCLUSION

zquezs Portrait of Innocent X is a reworking of the Bacons Study after Vela zquez painting which Bacon updated so that it would have pertinence Vela zquez went to Rome, determined to vie for its age, in the same way that Vela with the state portraits of Titian and remake them in his own time.71 Bacon pastiches the strong artistic heritage of papal painting by idiosyncratically combining the monumentality of the papal image with that of a photographic image, in order to give it contemporary resonance. He aimed to replicate the blurred, out-of-focus appearance and monochromatic tone of a newsprint photograph72 which was popular in his day. zquez painting conveyed both the spiritual leadership and political The Vela power of Pope Innocent X whilst Bacons version is counter-cultural: the Pope becomes an anti-Pope. Thus, everything is seen in reversethe papal throne becomes the electric chair, the papal attire becomes gaudy dress and the organ of speech becomes the aperture of a scream. In short, the condent, zquez painting becomes an inarticulate authoritative and holy Pope in the Vela screaming wretch, who is placed on the same level as the beasts.

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Bacon was interested in the papal gure for a variety of different reasons, which stemmed from the conation of his own father with the divine Father. His subsequent attack on the papal gure was viewed as a way of avenging his bitterness on this combined enemy, who opposed his sexuality and therefore his identity. It also conveyed his disgust at the institutions of religion, particularly Catholicism, which features as a negative force in his life. Bacon communicates his rage through the emission of the deadly scream, which is a stark reminder of the Nietzschean announcement of the death of God. Deleuze magnies the potency of the scream by suggesting that the Pope is not screaming at anything; there is no object in his eld of vision that is causing him to emit the scream. The scream of the Pope is located within the context of death and in the painting we experience the death of the symbol. The Pope screams as his public persona disintegrates, which in turn signies his own demise. And through the process of viewing, the viewer becomes the Pope, who experiences the void and the apocalyptic moment of the horror! the horror! where the self disappears.73 University of Chester rinaarya77@yahoo.co.uk
REFERENCES
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D. Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), p. 200. D. Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 134. The vestments of Head VI (1949) are indisputably papal. J. Russell, Francis Bacon (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993), p. 38. Which, incidentally, was destroyed. In Alley and Rothsteins catalogue raisonne there are two paintings entitled, Study after zquez, both dated 1950 in appendix B Vela of Destroyed Paintings. They are coded as D6 and D7. Bacon planned to paint a zquez series of three variations on the Vela portrait of Pope Innocent X for his exhibition at the Hanover Gallery in SeptemberOctober 1950. D6 and D7 are shown here but he never executed the third and decided at the last minute to withhold the series. Quoted in, R. Alley and J. Rothstein, Francis Bacon (London: Thames and Hudson, 1964) catalogue , D6 and D7. raisonne

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W. Schmied, Francis Bacon. Commitment and Conict (Munich: Prestel, Verlag, 2006), p. 13. A. Zweite, Bacons Scream, in A. Zweite (ed.) Francis Bacon. The Violence of the Real (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006), p. 69. Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact, p. 24. D. Sylvester, The Supreme Pontiff, quoted in, T. Shafrazi, Francis Bacon. Important Paintings from the Estate (New York: Tony Shafrazi Gallery. On occasion of the rst exhibition of paintings from the Estate of Francis Bacon, 1998), p. 24. Bacon remarked that he was reluctant to look at it. Quoted in, R. Alley and J. Rothstein, Francis Bacon (London: Thames and Hudson, 1964), p. 13. See also, Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact, p. 38. M. Peppiatt, Francis Bacon. Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Phoenix, 1997), p. 139. A. Zweite, Bacons Scream, quoted in, A. Zweite (ed.), 2006, p. 69. Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact, p. 81. Ibid., p. 71.

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Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon, pp. 1718. Ibid., p. 16. Peppiatt, Francis Bacon. Anatomy of an Enigma, p. 133. Ibid. N. Bryson, Bacons Dialogues with the Past, quoted in, W. Seipel, B. Steffen and C. Vitali (eds) Francis Bacon and the Tradition of Art (Milan: Skira, 2003), p. 47. H. M. Davies, The Screaming Pope: Past Art and Present Reality, quoted in, R. Chiappini (ed.) Francis Bacon (Milan: ` di Electra. Museo dArte Moderna Citta Lugano, 1993), p. 52. zquez D. Brown (and ed.) The World of Vela "-" (The Netherlands: Time Life International, 1972), p. 146. J. G. Hatch, Fatum as Theme and Method in the Work of Francis Bacon, Artibus et Historiae 19(37), (1998) 16375, p. 171. B. Steffen, The Representation of the zquezBacon, quoted in, Body: Vela W. Seipel, B. Steffen and C. Vitali (eds.) 2003, p. 206. I. Chilvers, H. Osborne and D. Farr (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 515. The other obvious exception is Goya, who transformed his portraits through caricature. Schmied, Francis Bacon. Commitment and Conict, p. 20. Bryson, Bacons Dialogues with the Past, pp. 456. zquez Brown (and ed.), The World of Vela "-", p. 159. Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact, pp. 5960. Bryson, Bacons Dialogues with the Past, p. 44. Davies, The Screaming Pope: Past Art and Present Reality, p. 58. D. Ades, Web of Images, in, D. Ades and A. Forge, Francis Bacon (London: The Trustees of the Tate Gallery and Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1985), p. 13. Ades does not localise this interpretation to zquezs Portrait of Innocent X Study after Vela

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but applies it to other papal images, such as, Pope I and Pope II (1951). Ades, Francis Bacon, p. 15. M. Harrison, In Camera: Francis Bacon. Photography, Film and the Practice of Painting (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005), p. 208. H. M. Davies, Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, "" (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1978), p. 98. P. Murray and L. Murray, Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 102. E. Martin (ed.), A Dictionary of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 195. L. B. Curzon, Dictionary of Law (London: Pitman Publishing, 1994), p. 187. B. Steffen, The Papal Portraits, p. 117. N. Bryson, Bacons Dialogues with the Past, p. 46. H. Davies and S. Yard, Francis Bacon (New York: Abbeville Press, 1986), p. 26. Schmied, Francis Bacon. Commitment and Conict, p. 20. Sylvester traces the fold in the curtain back to late Degas pastels. Bacon had been developing this device, which essentially consisted of the use of sets of close parallel lines that seemed to be passing through a semi-transparent body. Bacons use of this technique, which he called shuttering, created folds or striations in the background, which had the effect of breaking up the solidity of the gure. D. Sylvester, The Supreme Pontiff, quoted in, T. Shafrazi, Francis Bacon. Important paintings from the Estate, p. 26. Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact, pp. 467. Davies, Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, "", p. 100. Zweite, Bacons Scream, p. 72. H. M. Davies, The Papal Portraits of " (San Diego: Museum of Contemporary Arts in association with Lund Humphries, 1999), p. 12. J. Conrad, Heart of Darkness (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1990), p. 71.

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B. Steffen, Veils and Striations as Motifs of Isolation, p. 133. Davies, Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, "", p. 276. F. Nietzsche in R. J. Hollingdale (tr.) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (London: Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 2712. Hatch, Fatum as Theme and Method in the Work of Francis Bacon, p. 171. M. Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in the "s (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 26. Kinetic ickering is the phrase that Harrison uses to refer to the effects of the zquez (1950) striations of Study after Vela but I feel that it has a wider application zquezs which extends to Study after Vela Portrait of Pope Innocent X. Harrison, In Camera: Francis Bacon. Photography, Film and the Practice of Painting, p. 200. Although it seems almost imperative to read the existentialism within Bacon there is also much about his work and life that is antithetical to the almost stoic optimism of existentialism. Ades discusses this further in Web of Images, p. 11. Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact, p. 81. G. Deleuze, in D. Smith (tr.) Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, (London and New York: Continuum, 2003), p. 39. Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, x. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 389. Ibid., p. 38. Ibid. Bacon states how, I want to paint the scream more than the horror. Quoted in Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact, p. 48. In his interviews with Sylvester, Bacon mentioned his fascination with the scream and the mouth. Bacon explained to Sylvester that his obsession with the mouth stemmed from his fascination that comes from the mouth and states how, Ive always hoped in a sense to be able to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset . Quoted in, Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact, p. 50. See also, Sylvester, The Supreme Pontiff, in, Shafrazi, p. 48. Amongst the visual sources which Bacon assimilated which contained images of the buccal cavity was a second-hand book which Bacon bought in his younger days which had beautiful hand-coloured plates of diseases of the mouth from a bookshop in Paris. He also expressed the inuence that Poussins painting of The Massacre of the Innocents (16301), which he saw whilst in Paris and noted how he felt that it was probably the best human cry in painting. The Brutality of Fact, p. 35. Russell, Francis Bacon, 1993, p. 56. Deleuze is quoting from Sylvesters interviews (1987, pp. 28 in my edition), in Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, p. 53. Ibid. In the context in which Deleuze is describing this he suggests that beyond the scream is the smile, which is the terminus of abjection and establishes the disappearance of the body. Quoted in, Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, p. 28. I want to suggest that within zquezs the context of Study after Vela Portrait of Innocent X, the scream fulls the same function. Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, p. 29. Russell, Francis Bacon, p. 38. E. v. Alphen, Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 1992), p. 14. Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, p. 61. Davies, Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, "", p. 98. Davies, The Screaming Pope: Past Art and Present Reality, p. 46. M. Kunderas Introduction, in F. Borel, Bacon: Portraits and Self-Portraits, (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996), p. 12.

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