FRANCIS BACON (1909-92) was not, in any meaningful sense of the word, a “religious” painter, and he never received any ecclesiastical commission. The famous 1944 triptych of swollen bandaged figures in Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (Tate) assured his reputation as a Young British Artist. He revisited the subject, and painted a second version of it in a grander style, in 1988.
But neither it nor the series of paintings of a screaming pope