FRANCIS BACON

British artist Francis Bacon (1909-1992), one of the foremost artists of the 20th century, is known for his expressive figurative paintings. Perhaps Bacon's most famous image - the so-called "screaming pope" in Study after Vel zquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953) - became the touchstone for the longest series of paintings in his career, the Papal Portraits of 1953. In 1953 "haunted and obsessed by the image...by its perfection", Bacon sought to reinvent Vel zquez's 17th-century Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650) in the paintings that are the focus of this book. Francis Bacon replaced the grand, official state portrait with an intimate, spontaneous "candid camera" glimpse behind the well-ordered exterior.