The full @-@ length golden curtain @-@ like folds painted in heavy brush strokes are in part influenced by Degas but also similar to Titian 's 1558 Portrait of Cardinal Filippo Archinto . Bacon adapts the Old Master 's device to isolate and distance the sitter from the viewer ; the black ground @-@ paint is visible through the folds , making the separation all the more affecting . Bacon had already used similar forms in his Chicago panel , and they were to become a feature of his most acclaimed 1950s works , especially in his " screaming popes " . He became fascinated with the veil or curtain as a motif in painting , and collected many reproductions of works by Titian and Degas in which it is employed . He had begun his career as an interior decorator and designer of furniture and rugs in the mid @-@ 1930s , and later said that he liked " rooms hung all round with just curtains hung in even folds " . Veils or curtains appear in Bacon 's earliest works , notably the 1949 Study from the Human Body , always in portraits and always in front of , rather than behind , the figure .