The
working title of the album was
Cosmic Christmas, or ''The Rolling Stones' Cosmic Christmas'' – One proposed cover, a photograph of Jagger naked on a
cross, was scrapped by the record company for being "in bad taste". The initial LP of the album featured a three-
dimensional picture of the band on the cover by photographer
Michael Cooper. When viewed in a certain way, the
lenticular image shows the band members' faces turning towards each other, with the exception of Jagger, whose hands appear crossed in front of him. Looking closely at its cover, one can see the faces of each of the four Beatles, reportedly a response to the Beatles' inclusion of a
Shirley Temple doll wearing a "Welcome the Rolling Stones" sweater on the cover of
Sgt. Pepper. Later editions replaced the glued-on three-dimensional image with a photograph due to high production costs. A limited edition LP version in the 1980s reprinted the original 3D cover design; immediately following the reissue, it was claimed that the master materials for reprinting the 3D cover were intentionally destroyed, implying that faithful recreations of the cover would no longer be possible, but this has since been proven false by numerous re-issues. The lenticular album cover was featured, although shrunk down, for a (Japanese) SHM-CD release in 2008. The original cover design called for the lenticular image to take up the entire front cover, but finding this to be prohibitively expensive it was decided to reduce the size of the photo and surround it with the blue-and-white graphic design. The entire cover design is elaborate, with a dense photo collage filling most of the inside cover (along with a maze) designed by Michael Cooper, and a painting by Tony Meeuwissen on the back cover depicting the
four elements (Earth, Water, Fire, and Air). In some editions, the blue-and-white wisps on the front cover are used in a red-and-white version on the paper inner sleeve. The inner-cover collage has dozens of images, taken from reproductions of old master paintings (
Ingres,
Poussin,
da Vinci, among others), Indian mandalas and portraits, astronomy (including a large image of the planet Saturn), flowers, world maps, etc. The maze on the inside cover of the UK and US releases cannot be completed: a wall at about a half radius in from the lower left corner means one can never arrive at the goal labelled "It's Here" in the centre of the maze. It was the first of four Stones albums to feature a novelty cover; the others were the zipper on
Sticky Fingers (1971), the cut-out faces on
Some Girls (1978), and the stickers on
Undercover (1983). At some point around 1997, rumours were first heard that the album existed as a promo version, including a silk padding. A pink padded version was presented by photo accompanied by a letter from the Decca Copyright Department, ==Release and reception==