Article from: Art News
On Thursday afternoon, Beyoncé unveiled the cover for Renaissance, her newest album, and many fans immediately took to social media that it looks a lot like a famed painting from the 19th century.
The cover, which was shot by Carlijn Jacobs, features a scantily clad Beyoncé atop a silvery horse. It bears more than a few similarities to John Collier’s 1880/98 painting Lady Godiva, which depicts a nude woman who figures prominently in Anglo-Saxon lore.
As legend has it, Lady Godiva rode a horse in the buff sometime during the 11th century as a protest against plans from her husband Leofric to impose a harsh tax on the citizens of Coventry, England. Leofric said he would call it off if she appeared in town naked and on horseback, and she took him up on this dare. (She is believed to have told all the citizens to stay home so she could retain her dignity, and all but one, a man now known as Peeping Tom, did, although this part is thought to be apocryphal.)
The painting by Collier, an artist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, is currently held by the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry, which owns a collection of works that depict Lady Godiva.
John Collier, Lady Godiva, 1880/98.
“My intention was to create a safe place, a place without judgment,” Beyoncé said of her album. “A place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking. A place to scream, release, feel freedom. It was a beautiful journey of exploration.”
The comparison to Collier’s painting was made by various fan accounts on Twitter, some of which also linked the Renaissance cover to the time in 1977 when Bianca Jagger arrived at New York’s famed Studio 54 club on horseback.
ARTnews has reached out to a representative for Jacobs for comment on the possible Collier reference.
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Article from: Art News
