A Formal Analysis of Beyonce’s Photograph

In the year 2017, the birth of artist Beyoncé’s twins was what social media was raving about. The anticipation and excitement of the release of the photographs and the birth announcement of her new born twins were leaving social media users and fans eager to see how Sir and Rumi, the names of her children, would look like. The photograph showed Beyoncé in a floral background on a bright sunny afternoon holding her two newborn babies to her chest. This photograph was first released through social media on Beyoncé’s Instagram account. As Beyonce continues to be a figure that is constantly talked about in the media, you can imagine how thrilled and delighted her fans were to finally see the long-awaited picture.

There are many ways to analyze this photograph as it is shown to have been inspired by different portraits in the past. In Sylvan Barnet’s “A Short Guide to Writing about Art”, she discusses some of the questions that can be used to analyze a piece of art. She says some basic questions consider the significance of the work and why it was made as well as how the various physical aspects of that photograph contribute to the general art piece as a whole. When taking a look at the significance of this photo, for many mothers, it brings them a sense of joy and pride when being able to release a birth announcement. As we discussed in our tutorial, this image of Beyonce holding her children relates back to many historical images. “The blue veil is still heavily reminiscent of Renaissance portraits of the Madonna and child, but the robe ups the resemblance – and now that Rumi and Sir Carter are here, Beyoncé’s pose echoes images of the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus even more strongly”. This helps to understand that the blue veil might have been used in Beyoncé’s photograph intentionally to relate back to portrait of Virgin Mary holding Jesus drawing inspiration from it. This photograph can also relate back to the Sandra Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. In this portrait, when we take a look at Venus, who is shown in the middle of the painting, “she has a slight tilt of the head, and she leans in an awkward contrapposto-like stance”. This correlates back to the image of Beyoncé as she can be seen imitating almost the same pose and facial expression as Venus. Beyoncé has a slight head tilt as well as gazed yet weary expressions on her face. Her expressions show her cautious motherly instincts while cuddling her newborn babies as her main priority would be to keep them protected and safeguarded at all costs. In the photograph taken of Beyoncé, the colour blue stands out a considerable amount. “Blue seeks peace and tranquility and promotes physical and mental relaxation”. When looking at the photograph of Beyoncé, it brings about a mood of calmness when you first look at it. The colour blue could have been used to encourage peace and serenity of the photograph.

With all of these physical elements taken into consideration and drawing inspiration from historical portraits, this photograph of Beyoncé provides her fans or those who generally want to study this image in more depth with a lot of room to use their creativity when analyzing this image. All in all, this photograph of Beyoncé and her twins continues to be an iconic image all over social media and a very serene and angelic image

Works Cited

1. Beyoncé. (2017, July 14). Instagram post. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/BWg8ZWyghFy/
2. Botticelli, S. (n.d.). The Birth of Venus. Retrieved from https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/the-birth-of-venus
3. Brito, B. (2017, July 14). Beyoncé's twins are here: What we know so far. CNN.
4. Harber, L. (2017). Beyoncé's 1st Photo of Twins Rumi and Sir Carter Is Beautiful.
5. Maclauchlan, R. (2017, July 14). Beyoncé's birth announcement mirrors Madonna and child pose. The Guardian.
6. Markonish, D. (2019). Exploring Visual Culture: Definitions, Concepts, Contexts. MIT Press.
7. Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Definition of contrapposto. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/contrapposto
8. Sylvan, B. (2014). A Short Guide to Writing about Art (11th ed.). Pearson.