Decoding All The Visual References In Beyoncé’s Pregnancy Shoot

When it comes to pregnancy announcements, Beyoncé is not one to Instagram a picture of her latest scan and let the likes roll in.

To share with the world the happy news that she is expecting twins later this year, the singer posted a meticulously executed photo of herself cradling her stomach in lingerie, posing against a colourful floral backdrop. It has since broken all records to become the most liked Instagram photo of all time, and has launched countless memes and parodies.

Not content with that, the singer has now graced us with her entire pregnancy shoot, posting a series of stunning images on her website, www.beyonce.com. In the striking photoset, the 35-year-old poses naked next to a bust of Egyptian goddess Nefertiti, perches on top of a car and appears underwater, mermaid-like and swathed in colourful cloths. Art directed by Awol Erizku, it's instantly memorable, reference-soaked and yes, slightly self-mythologising: in other words, it's a move that only Beyoncé could get away with. And if you were wondering where nascent Gucci girl Blue Ivy fits into all of this, she plays a supporting role in the proceedings, handing her mother a flower as she reclines on a flower-strewn couch and kissing her pregnant stomach.

Beyoncé being Beyoncé, there are plenty of visual clues and artistic nods to unpick here: consider this your cheat sheet...

Warsan Shire

Titled 'I Have Three Hearts,' the album sees images interspersed with lines from a poem by Warsan Shire, with whom the singer collaborated for her visual album, Lemonade. 'venus has flooded me, second planet from the sun, i wake up on her foamy shore / she wants to take me to meet my children. I've done this before i'm still nervous,' the poem reads, the text making explicit another artistic nod...

Botticelli's Venus

It's one of the most recognisable paintings on the planet: Botticelli's Birth Of Venus shows the goddess of love and sexuality emerging from the waves in a shell, poised and serene. Beyoncé and Erizku (who is no stranger to this pop art - high art mash-up, having previously re-interpreted works like Vermeer's Girl With A Pearl Earring) have stripped back this reference point, pilfering only the Venus's pose and the smattering of flowers, which become a detail on the singer's tights - which have become a point of sartorial contention themselves - and a blooming substitute for Botticelli's waves. That bust of Nefertiti nudging into the foreground? Another nod to fertility and birth, this time from Egyptian myth.

Renaissance Art

Venus isnt the only piece of 16th century art that Bey has mined for iconography: the veil and framing flowers point to a hyper-real re-imagining of the Madonna and child imagery that is so common in Renaissance works. And that reclining-while-reaching pose, flanked by Blue Ivy? Very Sistine Chapel ceiling: let's see it as a gender-flipped Creation Of Man.

Mixing and matching

In ordinary circumstances, we'd say that searching for significance in a mismatched lingerie set is misguided at best, delusional at worst. But we're talking about Beyoncé here: a woman who meticulously curates every last detail of her image, even down to (yes) a seemingly casual colour clash. According to the BeyHive, the blue knickers and burgundy-pink bra point to the genders of her unborn children: a boy and a girl.

See all of Beyoncé's announcement photos in the gallery below...

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