High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Fragment of a Crucifixion is a 1950 painting by Irish-born artist Francis Bacon (1909–1992) and one of his many works based on iconography of the Crucifixion of Jesus. Its two distressed figures are at the end of a bloody struggle, with one positioned at the point of kill. The dying animal`s scream forms the centerpiece of the work. Although the painting`s title contains religious connotations, Bacon was a devout atheist, and there is no hope divinity in the work. Instead, it is intended to represent what he saw as the hopelessness of the human condition.