Francis Bacon – Study for a Pope 1. UPDATE: IT FAILED TO SELL
Francis Bacon’s Study for a Pope I – estimated at £25-35 million – will lead Sotheby’s contemporary art auction in London on July 1. The auction is poised to become London’s highest value sale of contemporary art with a pre-sale estimate of £143.2 million to £204.6 million. The 59 lot sale will include the most important collection of Andy Warhol dollar paintings in private hands.
Bacon was obsessed with the Velazquez Portrait of Pope Innocent X. He created his Study for a Pope I for his breakthrough retrospective exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1962. It was in the collection of Gunter Sachs for 40 years and was sold at auction for £10 million in 2005, a record price for a work of Bacon at the time.
Here is a video from Sotheby’s about the work: