 This triptych was the third such which Bacon painted relating to the Crucifixion, and follows 1944's "Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion", and the "Three Studies for a Crucifixion" of 1962.For Bacon images of the crucifixion were "a magnificent armature on which you can [work] about your own feelings and sensations ... You are working on all sorts of very private feelings about behaviour and the way life is".The 1965 work closely follows the 1962 triptych in mood, colour and form, and continues the artist's preoccupation with the imagery of the slaughterhouse.