I've been looking more into the meanings behind the painting and trying to find out the different feelings and moods that are given off. Here I have highlighted and noted anything relevant or helpful for me that I have found: 

"Bacon’s popes depart even further from their source, often replacing the pontiff’s head with the equally recognisable screaming face of the wounded nurse mown down by the soldiers’ gunfire in the Odessa steps sequence of Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin." 

 "The insertion subverts the encapsulation of power and self-assurance projected by Velázquez. The screaming mouth, isolated from other facial features and divorced from any narrative context, suggests existential agony. The pathos of human vulnerability and loss of faith or conviction are accentuated by the precisely rendered space frames in many Bacon images of popes"

"Bacon's obsessive reworking of the papal theme suggests that it may have possessed further significance and perhaps psychological charge for the artist in relation to his sexuality"

"Francis Bacon, the artist, paints provocative and disturbing images that carry a raw sense of anxiety and alienation. They reflect that existential fear, loathing and incomprehension at the atrocities of the Holocaust that came to light at the end of World War Two"

"If Velazquez's 'Portrait of Pope Innocent X' portrays the public face of power while hinting at the private flaws of the man behind it, then Bacon’s ‘Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X’ broadcasts his inner psychoses."

Opinions

I've found to be a lot of relation to anxiety and fear mentioned around the picture through my searches online. I even found quite a few suggestions that his paintings may 'encapsulate Bacon's traumatic feelings' about his father who rejected him when he found out his son's 'homosexual inclinations.' The encapsulation of power also seemed to be a keen interest of Bacon. 

I feel a real sense of the how he has distorted the original image and it seems to me like the one powerful image of the Pope by Velazquez has been re-made to show that the Pope isn't perfect. Bacon once said 'We are all carcasses' hinting in a belief that no man should be better than another resulting in this 'The Pope is flawed like any other human' theory. The colours create a kind of monstrous and frightening vibe and despite the purple giving off a haunting presence it is also meant to be a royal colour, hinting towards his status in the Catholic church. The vibrant colours make the painting stand out with it's weird, twisted mood. The Pope's face reminds me of agony, something that appears to be associated quite a bit online with the painting. 

Sound

From my research I have learnt that I want to show some kind of agony or terror and relate it back to the church and more religious scenes. This could be done with mixing screams and scratches with the sound of church bells, sermon, choir etc. I want to reflect back to the painting with the sounds and perhaps scratches could represent the stylistic nature of the paint and how it looks like the image has been dragged. 

The Screaming Pope

• Painted in 1953

• Bacon worked from reproductions and never saw the original painting by Velazquez. 

• He painted about forty five variations based around the subject of the Pope - The Screaming Pope being one.

• Possibly inspired by Picasso for producing variations on a work from the past.