The Velázquez Portrait of Pope Innocent X
Two men, one face
The pairing is the thing. On one side a Spanish painter in Rome catches a seventy-six-year-old Roman in a red cape and a bad mood; on the other, the greatest sculptor of the century cuts the same head out of white Carrara marble. They have been shown together since 1927, and standing between them you notice how differently two masters can be right about the same man. The pope, incidentally, is the family’s own: Cardinal Giovanni Battista Pamphilj was elected in 1644 and reigned until 1655, and this gallery exists because of what he left his nephew. The family, from Innocent X to the present.
Hippolyte Taine called it “the masterpiece amongst all portraits” and wrote that “once it has been seen, it is impossible to forget”. I have watched a great many people find out he was right, in a small room, with their audio guide still talking.
“Troppo vero”
The story goes that Innocent looked at the finished canvas and said È troppo vero — it is too true. It is a good story. It is also a traditional anecdote whose veracity experts doubt, and I am not going to hand it to you as a documented quotation, because nobody can show you where it was first written down. Tell it as a story people tell. The anecdote, and what is actually known about it.
Why the picture kept being repainted
Francis Bacon made more than forty-five known variants of this portrait in the 1950s and early 1960s, among them Head VI of 1949, Pope I of 1951 and the Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X of 1953. None of Bacon’s versions is in this building, and people do arrive expecting one. What is here is the original he would not go to see. Why Bacon kept coming back to it.
The cabinet is small and it is the one place on the route where a queue can form inside. If you are in the first entry slot of the day, walk the wings in reverse for five minutes and come to the pope when the room in front of you has emptied. Nobody will stop you: the route is a suggestion, not a one-way system.
Seeing it properly
Give it ten minutes rather than two. Look at the hands and the paper in them, then the eyes, then step back far enough that the red stops being cloth and starts being weather. Then look at the bust, then back at the canvas. The commentary included with your ticket, recorded by the present owner of both objects, will tell you things about the room no label would. Where the rest of the collection’s highlights sit is on what to see.
Getting into the room
Entry is reserved in 30-minute slots and the plain ticket holds one for you; the gallery also sells at its own desk on the day. 4.7 from 1,910 reviews, the biggest sample on this attraction, and the audio guide is included with it.
Frequently asked questions
Where is Velázquez’s Portrait of Innocent X?
In the Galleria Doria Pamphilj at Via del Corso 305 in Rome, in a cabinet of its own on the public route, alongside Bernini’s marble bust of the same pope. It is not in the Vatican Museums, which is where a surprising number of people go looking for it.
Did the pope really say “troppo vero”?
That is a traditional anecdote and experts doubt it. The phrase — it is too true — gets repeated as a quotation, but there is no documented source for it, so treat it as a story rather than a fact. More on where the line comes from.
Is a Francis Bacon pope on display here?
No. Bacon made more than forty-five variants after this portrait, including Head VI of 1949 and the 1953 Study, and none of them is in this building. What hangs here is the Velázquez itself.
How big is the painting?
141 × 119 cm, oil on canvas, painted probably in the summer of 1650. Smaller in person than most people expect, which is part of why the room works. Budget an extra ten minutes for it.