Study after Velázquez

Study after Velázquez is a large 1950 panel painting by the Irish-born English artist Francis Bacon.

After Head VI, it is the second of Bacon's long series of paintings influenced by Diego Velázquez's 1650 Portrait of Innocent X.

[1] The panel shows a full length view of the pope, engulfed in vertical folds that may be either the linings of a curtain or the bars of a cage.

The folds serve to emphasise the figure's isolation, and were drawn from devices used by Edgar Degas in the late 19th century, which Bacon described as "shuttering".

A number of works in the series, including this painting, re-emerged in the late 1990s, and are considered among the finest of his output.