LONDON.- On July 1
Sotheby's in London will offer Francis Bacon's famed painting, Study for a Pope I, 1961, estimated £25,000,000-35,000,000. Consumed by an obsession with Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Innocent X, the Irish-born artist created this monumental work specifically for his breakthrough retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1962. For 40 years the painting remained in the collection of the celebrated art collector (and infamous playboy) Gunter Sachs, before being sold at auction in 2005 for $10m (£5.8m), a record price for any work by Bacon at that time. The subsequent ten years have seen a meteoric rise in the value of paintings by the artist. Today, the record for a Bacon stands at $142m (£89.3 million), the highest price for any work of contemporary art at auction. With the artist’s critical and commercial standing at new heights, Study for a Pope I, will lead the highest estimated sale of contemporary art ever staged in London, estimated £143.2m-204.6m.
Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s Senior International Specialist in Contemporary Art: “Bacon speaks to the soul; he captured what it means to be human like no other artist that came before or after. His portraits are sought by collectors from all corners of the globe because they express something universal, exploring the deepest psychological depths of the human mind”
BACON AND VELAZQUEZ
“…it’s one of the most beautiful pictures in the world and I think I’m not at all exceptional as a painter in being obsessed by it. I think a number of artists have recognised it as being something very remarkable.” - Francis Bacon
Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X captivated Francis Bacon. From the early 1950s he obsessively acquired books on the work, plastering black and white reproductions from the pages across his studio walls. Despite such an all-consuming infatuation with the painting, he famously chose never to view the original in the flesh at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome.
Commissioned to paint the notorious Pope Innocent X, Velázquez dutifully portrayed the Bishop of Rome encased in the trappings of the most powerful man in the world. Yet within the gold, silk and lace vestiges of papal power, exquisitely rendered by the Spanish Master, we see a tortured human being beset by flaw and fallibility. Innocent X wears a pained and suspicious countenance which betrays his unscrupulous and duplicitous dealings as Pontiff. Legend has it that so insightful was Velázquez’s portrait, that when the Pope saw the finished work, he exclaimed with consternation: "Troppo vero!" (too truthful!).
Critics have long debated the reasons behind Bacon's obsession with the Velázquez portrait. It is the subject that announced Bacon’s genius at the beginning of the 1950s, and would continue to obsess him for 20 years. “I became obsessed by this painting and I bought photograph after photograph of it. I think really that was my first subject”, the artist said. Born in Dublin in 1909, Bacon grew up during time of great political and religious unrest in Ireland, with the country on the verge of civil war. Religion and the church became closely bound with conflict, violence and power for the artist from a young age. Many viewed the Pope (just as in Europe at the time of Velázquez) as an unimpeachable figure of authority. Despite being a fierce atheist, an existentialist, he continually returned to religious subject matter, most famously in his portraits of the Pope.
“I think that most people who have religious beliefs, who have the fear of God, are much more interesting than people who just live a kind of hedonistic and drafting life.... I can't help admiring but despising them.... - Francis Bacon
Bacon identified the figure of the Pope as the supreme vehicle for an expression of modern man’s godlessness in the wake of the traumas of the Second World War. On his studio walls, alongside the images of Velázquez’s Pope, he would post photographs of Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. Bacon takes us beyond the veneer of Papal infallibility to expose the flawed human being, presenting a figure afflicted by inner turmoil and despair.
“If you look at a Velázquez, what do you think about? ... I don’t think about his sitters, I think about him… I think about Velázquez, I think people believe that they’re painting other people, but they paint out their own instincts.” - Francis Bacon
AN EXCEPTIONAL HISTORY
Francis Bacon's Study for a Pope I boasts an exceptional history. It is the first in a series of six major Pope paintings created by the artist between April and May 1961 specifically for his breakthrough retrospective at the Tate in 1962. A landmark moment in Bacon’s career, the exhibition was described the by The Times art critic as “the most stunning exhibition by a living British painter there has been since the war.” The second work from the acclaimed series, Study for a Pope II, hangs in the collection of the Vatican Museum in Rome.
The painting was acquired from Marlborough Fine Art in 1966 by Gunter Sachs, former husband of Bridget Bardot and one of the great art collectors of the 20th-century. It remained in Sachs's collection for almost 40 years until sold at auction for $10m, a record-price at the time for any work by Francis Bacon. Over the last ten years there has been a remarkable rise in the market for works by the Irish-born artist. Today, the record for a Bacon stands at $142m (£89.3 million), set for Three Studies of Lucian Freud in 2013, the highest price for any work of contemporary art ever sold at auction. In 2005, Bacon’s auction record stood at less than that of the American contemporary greats Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rothko and Pollock. Now, in the space of just a decade, his work has superseded all of these artists in market terms.
Study for a Pope I, 1961 will be offered as part of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction in London taking place on 1 July 2015 at 7pm.
