Triptych – Studies of the Human Body, 1970

In Triptych – Studies of the Human Body he elevated the contorted, isolated female figures into an existential limbo, a liminal zone. They cling, vertiginously, onto a celestial ‘rainbow’, like that in Rogier van der Weyden’s Last Judgement (c. 1450). The three figures all rework art-historical precedents. That on the left is adapted from Picasso’s Female Nude in a Garden (1934, Musée Picasso, Paris), the lilac-pinks of the body in which probably suggested the colour of Bacon’s ground in the triptych. The central figure is another homage to the Belvedere Torso, albeit regendered by Bacon and with the absent head of the original concealed underneath one of the ubiquitous umbrellas. The right figure is based on a painting of Narcissus, attributed to Caravaggio (and more convincingly to Spadarino): Bacon, however, denies Narcissus his reflection and changes his sex. Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné, 2016, p. 956.