Sedia Gestaoria Francis Bacon Analysis

Even though the pope is sitting on a what viewers usually think is a sedia gestatoria, it does not appear that way. Bacon painted the sedia gestatoria slightly overlapping the pope which made the pope appear kind of hemmed in. The effect is greatly enhanced because it is thick lines of yellow. We associate yellow as light, which lead viewers to believe he is in an electric chair. And then on top of all that you've got these vertical stripes, almost very thinly painted, which seem to hold captive of the pope, similar to a prison. These parallel light and dark striation has feature in Bacon’s paintings many times. Propaganda imagery of the Nazi ‘cathedral of light’ is possible model Bacon has used as a reference for those vertical stripes.