Francis Bacon, “Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion” (ca. 1944)

We see the seeds of so many aspects of Bacon’s subsequent work in this iconic early painting. What themes — and imagery — is he is beginning to develop here?

It’s a remarkable picture not only because of the strength of its imagery but also because of the moment at which it was executed and then shown to the public — the same month, April 1945, that Mussolini was shot and hung, Hitler committed suicide, FDR died, and the revelation of the horrors of the war were suddenly revealed to everyone. Here you have horrific beings that look both like pleurants [or mourners] from a crucifixion scene, but also evoke harpies, or monsters from [Hieronymus] Bosch’s paintings. Yet we now know that many of the forms derive specifically from photographs of Nazi rallies, seen through the lens of Picasso’s biomorphic Surrealism, which very much impressed Bacon. But we also see the beginning of his receding lines to indicate spatial recession — what I call the “space frame.” We see bits of furniture, which would always show up in his work, and we see Christian imagery being used to convey un-Christian sentiments — despair, horror, emptiness.

Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art