The present work is essentially a curated on-screen exhibition consisting of about a hundred and sixty contemporary and posthumous portraits of Sir Francis Bacon.

The exhibits are arranged chronologically in five categories: paintings, engravings, statues, medals and ephemera. There are no page numbers as such, however, each work is numbered to facilitate cross-referencing between the portraits. This is essential because, with only a few exceptions, all of the many posthumous works were derived from portraits made during Bacon's life-time.

The simple raison d'être behind this selective compilation of the portraits of Francis Bacon is that it needed to be done, however inadequately. Four hundred years after his death, Bacon's writings are in wider circulation than ever. For anyone reading about or researching his life and works, especially Baconians, this online gallery hopes to provide a convenient and more or less comprehensive guide to his most significant portraits. The process of selection was based on several criteria. A handful of artists were impossible to research due to the absence of any available information about them or their work and had to be deleted from the inventory. Certain engravings of Bacon's image are so numerous and often so similar to each other that a representative selection had to be made. Visual appeal was not necessarily a criterion of selection, however some images have been culled on admittedly subjective aesthetic grounds.