Francis Bacon

Bacon (in his eighties, the world-famous painter, at right) snapped with Sicilian decorator Giulio Ontarini (middle) and with Bacon's final boyfriend (the bearded one) a Spanish banker named Jose Capello on holiday on the Isole Eolie near Sicily. When Bacon died of heart failure in 1992 he was in Madrid against the advice of doctors who thought he was not well enough to travel. Source: Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino photo.

Bacon and the crucial boyfriend, George Dyer (with sunglasses) in the 1950s. Those were the good times, on the Orient Express. John Maybury made a seriously interesting film about the Dyer/Bacon relationship, called Love is the Devil. With Derek Jacobi (Bacon) and Daniel Craig (Dyer). Bacon's strongest paintings were responses to Dyer's suicide.

Bacon (left) with William F. Burroughs, Bacon looking like he is almost at a loss, for once.

Bacon (left) and his first heart-throb, the sadistic Peter Lacy, in Tangier. The chemically-degraded photo-print color looks magically right.

Bacon (right) and his French philosopher-critic-friend Michel Leiris. Bacon painted Leiris several times.

Paying off a London taxi.