Fragment of a Crucifixion

Fragment of a Crucifixion is a harrowing and unfinished painting by Francis Bacon that strips the Christian crucifixion of its redemptive meaning, leaving only raw suffering and predatory violence. Painted in 1950, the canvas shows two creatures locked in a brutal encounter: an upper figure — part dog, part bird of prey — bears down on a chimera-like form below that combines owl features with disturbingly human facial characteristics. The composition traces the shape of a T-shaped cross, but any sacred connotation is overwhelmed by the animality of the scene.

The screaming mouth that dominates the lower creature is one of Bacon's signature motifs, drawn from sources as diverse as Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 film Battleship Potemkin, medical textbooks, and works by Velázquez and Grünewald. Thinly sketched passerby figures appear in the background, seemingly oblivious to the central drama — a detail that deepens the painting's atmosphere of existential isolation.

Bacon himself later dismissed the work as "too literal and explicit," and he abandoned the crucifixion theme for twelve years before returning to it with the monumental Three Studies for a Crucifixion in 1962. Yet the painting's unflinching directness remains powerful. As an avowed atheist, Bacon used religious iconography not to affirm faith but to explore what he saw as the irreducible brutality of existence — a crucifixion without hope of resurrection.

The painting is held by the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands.