Study After Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X

A pope sits enthroned and screaming, his mouth a black howl, his purple robes streaked by vertical lines that seem to imprison him behind a transparent cage or curtain of falling paint. Francis Bacon based the figure on Velazquez's calm, formidable Portrait of Pope Innocent X, also in this collection, and transformed authority into anguish and terror. Now in the Des Moines Art Center, this 'screaming pope' is among his most famous images - the old master's serene power violently undone, religious and worldly dignity dissolved into raw, modern existential dread.