The INSIDER Summary:
- Beyoncé Knowles and husband Jay-Z recently announced the birth of their twins, Rumi and Sir.
- Beyoncé posted a photo of herself with the babies on her Instagram.
- She seems to draw from religious iconography as well as some of the most famous works of art of all time.
- This isn’t the first time she’s done something similar.
When Beyoncé Knowles gifted the world with a picture of her 1-month-old twins — Rumi and Sir (a girl and a boy, respectively) — people were entranced by her look.
How could you not be? Beyoncé, 35, had turned her gorgeous face to the sun, made holding two infants look effortless, and wore a multicolored robe designed by a genderless designer as well as a blue veil. At the time of this post, around 10 million people had liked the photo.
But the picture was not just about introducing us all to her new children. Some people couldn’t help but notice that the superstar’s pose and the photograph’s composition draws directly from religious iconography as well as some of the most famous works of art of the past millennia.
Beyoncé as the Virgin Mary
In her Instagram, Beyoncé is crowned by a halo of flowers, holding her children in the crook of her arm, and tilting her head just a little to the side — a classic pose that’s typically seen in paintings or sculptures of the Virgin Mary.
Here, compare Beyoncé’s photo to medieval painter Duccio di Buoninsegna’s «Rucellai Madonna.» You can see that Beyoncé also tilts her head towards her children and looks out at the viewer.
«Rucellai Madonna» (1285) and Beyoncé’s picture. Wikimedia Commons and Beyoncé Knowles/Instagram
In the Conversation, Katie Edwards, the director of SIIBS at the University of Sheffield, wrote a powerful explanation of how Beyoncé is challenging the idea that whiteness equals purity by putting herself in the place of a figure that has been typically represented as white in Western culture:
Beyoncé’s re-appropriation of Virgin Mary iconography offers a biting critique of this supreme exemplar of feminine whiteness and the ideology that constructs and perpetuates it. At a moment when white supremacy is echoed in the «America first» slogan of President Trump, Beyoncé simultaneously dislodges «white» from its central place in religious iconography and Trump from his recent monopoly of press headlines.
You can read Edwards’ full essay here.
Beyoncé at the top of the pyramid
That’s not all: Beyoncé’s head combined with her billowing robe forms a triangle. Many renaissance paintings employ a similar triangular composition to Beyoncé’s Instagram photo since pyramidal composition is a classic, eye-pleasing structure.
It’s not uncommon to find this composition in paintings where the Virgin Mary is the subject, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s «Madonna and Child with Saint Anne.»
Leonardo da vinci virgin child and saint anne
It’s also visible in other famous paintings, such as Michelangelo’s «The Last Judgement.»
This geometric shape is a unifying way to cement the figures altogether, but can also be used to represent the Holy Trinity in Christianity. It’s a cementing pose that also draws the viewers’ eyes around the entire composition.
Beyoncé as the goddess of love
Beyoncé also looks a bit like Sandro Botticelli’s «The Birth of Venus» painting. In Botticelli’s work, Venus’ hair is flowing, her face is also tilted to catch the sun, and she poses on a clam shell as flowers are strewn about her.
Though Beyoncé is not on a clam shell, nor does she have any other figures surrounding her, she poses in a mirror image way, framed by flowers, and coming towards the audience with the ocean behind her.
If this was Beyoncé’s and her photographer’s intention, it’s a strong message about womanhood. Beyoncé is not only comparing herself to one of the most well-known mother figures in world history, but also to the Greek goddess of love.
This implies that she’s a mother as well as a sexual being. Her image is one that is neither completely chaste and maternal nor completely sexual. She encompasses all at once, challenging expectations of how a mother should look and act in our culture.
Beyoncé has done this before
If you think this is all just a coincidence, you would have to ignore every other time Beyoncé has drawn from religion and art in her body of work.
In her 2017 Grammy performance, for instance, she borrowed from the iconography of a slew of divine women that spanned religions and cultures. In her music video for «Mine» in 2013, Beyoncé was portrayed as the Virgin Mary in Michelangelo’s «Pietà» sculpture, and her visual album «Lemonade» was also rife with symbolism, both of the occult and from world religions.
And let us not forget that her pregnancy announcement for the twins also used fertility goddess and Virgin Mary imagery.
Knowing how creative and artistically driven Beyoncé is, do you really doubt that she had all of this in mind when she posted her photos to Instagram? I didn’t think so.
