Kagan, J., dissenting
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Velázquez, Pope Innocent X, |
Francis Bacon, Study After |
To begin with, note the word “after” in Bacon’s title. Copying is so deeply rooted in the visual arts that there is a naming convention for it, with “after” denoting that a painting is some kind of “imitation of a known work.” M. Clarke, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms 5 (2d ed. 2010). Bacon made frequent use of that convention. He was especially taken by Velázquez’s portrait of Innocent X, referring to it in tens of paintings. In the one shown above, Bacon retained the subject, scale, and composition of the Velázquez original. Look at one, look at the other, and you know Bacon copied. But he also transformed. He invested his portrait with new “expression, meaning, [and] message,” converting Velázquez’s study of magisterial power into one of mortal dread. Campbell, 510 U. S., at 579.
But the majority, from all it says, would find the change immaterial. Both paintings, after all, are “portraits of [Pope Innocent X] used to depict [Pope Innocent X]” for hanging in some interior space, ante, at 12–13; so on the
