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Page Number: 84.0

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

33 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Velázquez, Pope Innocent X, 
c. 1650, oil on canvas 

Francis Bacon, Study After 
Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope 
Innocent X, 1953, oil on canvas 

To begin with, note the word “after” in Bacon’s title.  Copy-
ing is so deeply rooted in the visual arts that there is a nam-
ing 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).  Ba-
con  made  frequent  use  of  that  convention.    He  was  espe-
cially 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  Veláz-
quez 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