Between 1946 and 1971, Bacon created numerous paintings based on Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, c.1650. The earliest one, ‘Landscape with Pope/Dictator’, which was painted in Monaco around 1946, has only recently been rediscovered. ‘I became obsessed by this painting and I bought photograph after photograph of it. I really think that was my first subject,’ Bacon recalled.[1] However, in hindsight he said that he regarded his paintings of the subject as a ‘failure’.[2] Today, Bacon’s Pope paintings are among his best-known and most iconic works.