Innocent X
c. 1650
 Oil on canvas, 141 x 119 cm
 Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome

Innocent X

VELÁZQUEZ

Velázquez was, from 1623, court painter to Philip IV in Madrid. In 1650 he was sent to Italy to buy paintings for one of his monarch's palaces; while in Rome the artist was commissioned to portray the Pope. Velázquez was given the unenviable task of depicting the most powerful and, according to contemporaries, the ugliest man in Rome. The artist was successful, for when the Pontiff saw the portrait he is said to have remarked, "troppo vero" (all too true!).

Innocent X
 c. 1650
 Oil on canvas, 49.2 x 41.3 cm
 National Gallery of Art, Washington

Several sketches preceded the Galleria Doria-Pamphilj picture, one of which is illustrated here.

Pius VII
1805
Oil on canvas, 86 x 71 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Pius VII

DAVID

"J’avoue que j’ai longtemps envié aux grands peintres qui m’ont precede des occasions que je ne croyais jamais recontrer. J’aurai peint un empereur et enfin un pape."

Jacques-Louis David

While Pope Pius VII remained in Paris after the consecration, David also painted his portrait and thereby joined an illustrious band of past artists - Raphael, Titian and Velázquez - as the painter of a pontiff. David broke with protocol by sitting down while he worked, as previously tradition had dictated that the humble artist should kneel to paint the Pope. David, though, did appreciate the honour bestowed upon him and apparently put on fine clothes and wore a sword as he worked. He responded warmly to the venerable old pontiff and was both delighted and moved by the benediction that he received from the hand of Pius.

Bacon's Self Portrait as Innocent X
with John Paul II in the Style of Durand
(detail) 1996

Bacon's Self Portrait as Innocent X
with John Paul II in the Style of Durand

This allegorical portrait of the Anglo-Irish artist Francis Bacon who died 1992 is set in the Sale Regia of the Apostolic Palace, Vatican City, where a decade earlier John Paul II had granted André Durand one of three audiences for the only official portrait ever painted of the Polish pontiff.

Remembering his reaction to Bacon’s death, Durand says:

"In the picture that flashed to my mind’s eye, John Paul II would sit to Bacon in the Sale Regia as the he had done for me in 1982. My picture would be a mirror. It amused me to set up a fantasy audience for Bacon in my allegory knowing that he was already consorting with a host of popes that would surely include Innocent X by sole virtue of the fact that he inspired the Velásquez masterpiece."

With some irony, Durand has painted Bacon into a situation where Bacon would not have wanted to go, a situation where he seems like a gatecrasher in a state of affairs from which there is no escape.

And Bacon appears twice in the allegory; once as he observes himself in the mirror, and again in Durand's 1983 papal portrait, also reflected in the mirror. Bacon has blocked in a whimsical likeness of himself in the foreground of the composition as Innocent X, attired in the red cap (camauro) and manteletta and white rochetta.

Idea Fine Art
London, July 2005

St. Joseph's Chapel,
Westminster Cathedral, 2004

John Paul II

DURAND

An El Cid Moment

Durand's implacably objective portrait of John Paul II was on loan to many institutions and churches for two decades before it was finally hung in the place for which it had been commissioned and painted, the Knights of Saint John’s seat in Krakow. The portrait’s inimitability resulted in demands for copies, but Durand declined numerous requests (one from Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum) for a second version.

However, last year in celebration of the 25th anniversary of John Paul II’s pontificate, Durand took up the challenge of painting a second version, to fulfil a request from Westminster Cathedral.

In a recent letter to Dr. Andrew Ciechanowiecki, who had arranged the 1982 sittings for the official portrait, Durand writes,

"I felt that it would be an interesting experience to copy such a widely reproduced picture painted three decades ago. I was surprised by how well the original version was conceived and composed. Without any conscious intent, John Paul II has aged in the second portrait, possibly because I did not strictly adhere to the idealised proportions of the 1983 version. In the second version, the Holy Father’s right foot appears at the bottom of the composition in a shining black leather shoe (not his Doc Marten’s). I can imagine doting nuns polishing these shoes after every jaunt he takes. This foot could be considered iconic because Pisces rules feet, and the fish is the symbol of Christianity."

The same letter reveals a technical reason for the second version. In the early nineties Durand began to paint on a heavily grained Belgian linen which allowed the artist to achieve effects of greater luminosity and density of colour by a highly sophisticated and complex application of glazes. No doubt Durand, the consummate craftsman, saw an opportunity to compare his new methods to the techniques of the previous two and a half decades :

"I have used much heavier grained linen in the past decade that affords my brushwork a greater plasticity. I know why the Venetians had a penchant for rough textured cloth."

As Cecil Gould observed, John Paul II’s coat of arms was significant in the original version, but in the second version, Durand is not only minded to emphasise the coat of arms, but adds the ailing pontiff’s humble motto as a poignant focus:

"A banner under the papal crest appears in the second version inscribed with the words 'Totus Tuus' which I suppose is about the offering that John Paul II made of his life to the Queen of Heaven."

The 1983 and 2004 portraits shown to scale

Martin Kettle describes the Pope's final weeks in a way that could as well describe Durand’s second take on the conventions of pontifical portraiture and Karol Wojtyla’s legacy:

“. . . an El Cid moment - a form of defiance through faith that John Paul has gradually perfected through his career - suggestive of the climax of the Spanish epic when the dead Cid is strapped into his saddle to lead his troops into battle against the infidels one last time. In his agony, the Pope invites us to share something truly instructive."

The second portrait, despite Durand’s concentrated effort to copy accurately his first version, seems to say:

"Everyone fights for life. None of us seeks death. People always want to survive. John Paul, it turns out, is no different from the rest of us. He may be the Vicar of Christ but even he does not want to go before his time".

But Durand’s 2005 John Paul II portrays Karol Wojtyla’s greatest performance and, in his agony, the dying Pope does more than fight for his own life. In Durand’s weighty image,

"He seems to be using his position and fame to make a statement about all lives. He is saying that he is unwilling to be shunted off the stage before he is ready to go. He is saying that his suffering is universal. But he is saying, above all, that all lives are valuable, and that he is entitled to live his life to the very end, however hard it may be."

His Greatest Performance
Martin Kettle, The Guardian, Saturday 25 March 2005

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