The First Pope

A shadowy figure sits enclosed in what looks like a glass box, his mouth open in a silent howl. This is the work of Francis Bacon, one of Britain's most unsettling painters of the twentieth century, made in 1946. Bacon loved to twist and blur the human face, and here his pope-like figure seems to dissolve into the murky darkness around him. The theme fascinated him for years, and he kept returning to the idea of the screaming pope, drawing loose inspiration from a famous portrait of Pope Innocent X by the old Spanish master Velázquez.

Nearly everything in the picture disappears into deep, murky blacks, which leaves the trapped man feeling terribly alone. The small cluster of pink and purple flowers at the bottom comes as a surprise, a soft and tender touch beneath all that torment. Bacon almost never explained his paintings, and he was happy to let the raw emotion do the talking. His art was never made to please or soothe, but works like this dig into your nerves and hold on, leaving behind a mood of dread that stays with you.