The name

What is a triptych?

Three panels, hinged, that open and close. The middle one holds the argument. The two wings decide what you see before you are allowed to see it.

Left wing

It folds

The wings are hinged and they close. A triptych has two faces: the one it shows on an ordinary day and the one it shows when it is opened. Most of them spent most of their lives shut.

Centre

It argues

Three panels is not decoration, it is a sentence. The centre carries the claim and the wings qualify it, which is why the form survived the collapse of the culture that invented it.

Right wing

It travels

Fold it and it is luggage. That is how the form spread, and it is also why so many survive as loose panels: what folds can be carried off, sold apart, or sawn down the middle.

Ghent / 1432

The face almost everyone actually saw

The Ghent Altarpiece closed, after restoration. Roughly 70 percent of the exterior turned out to be 16th-century overpaint. The painted frames cast shadows matching the real light of the Vijd Chapel. This grey face is what the public saw on ordinary days.

The grey face above is the Ghent Altarpiece closed. The colour is behind it, and it was shown on holidays. If you know the painting, you almost certainly know the other side.

What follows is fifteen hundred years of the form, in order. Keep scrolling.

Rome / 506
Consular diptych of Areobindus
Consular diptych of Areobindus, 506 CE, ivory, Louvre. Five panels from his single year in office survive, scattered across Lucca, Zurich, Paris, Besancon and Dijon. Theodosius I made ivory diptychs a legally restricted consular privilege in 384.
Rome / 487
Overwritten with the names of the dead
Diptych of Boethius, 487 CE, Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia. Its reverse was overwritten twice with lists of Christian dead, once after 604 and again in the mid-8th century. A pagan magistrate's calling card, recycled as a parish death register.
Rome / 6th c.
Emperor on the front, the dead on the back
The Barberini Ivory, 6th century, Louvre OA 9063. On the reverse, a list of Austrasian kings and prayers for the dead written in the Auvergne around 613. Antiquity's most self-important object, repurposed as Frankish stationery.
Byzantium / c. 940
The Harbaville Triptych
The Harbaville Triptych, Constantinople, c. 940-960, ivory, Louvre OA 3247. The finest surviving Byzantine ivory triptych: Christ enthroned between the Virgin and John the Baptist, ranks of saints on the wings.
Byzantium / c. 940
A paradise nobody was meant to see
The reverse of the Harbaville Triptych: a cross in a starfield between two cypresses, with birds, a lion, a hare and a partridge. Carved on the face that stands against the wall, which is the strongest argument that these objects were never merely protective cases.
Medieval Europe / c. 1156
Byzantium nested inside a reliquary
The Stavelot Triptych, c. 1156-58, Morgan Library. Abbot Wibald went to Constantinople to arrange a marriage for Frederick Barbarossa and came home with two small Byzantine reliquary triptychs, then commissioned a Mosan triptych to hold them. A triptych inside a triptych.
Medieval Europe / c. 1330
Heraldry as the closed state
The John Grandisson Triptych, England, c. 1330-40, ivory with silver hinges, British Museum. Its outer wings carry the bishop's coat of arms, not a sacred image. What the closed triptych showed was sometimes just the owner's name in heraldic form.
Medieval Europe / 15th c.
The form goes miniature
Miniature boxwood triptych with scenes from the Life of Christ, Louvre OA 5612. Roughly 150 Gothic boxwood miniatures survive worldwide; about twenty are polyptychs, 10 to 13 cm high.
Medieval Europe / c. 1500
The triptych shrunk to fit a palm
Prayer nut of Eewert Jansz van Bleiswick, Rijksmuseum BK-1981-1. A hinged boxwood sphere 30 to 65 mm across, carved with entire crowded scenes inside. Micro-CT scanning in 2016-17 finally revealed how they were assembled.
Trecento Italy / c. 1312
A cardinal's travelling altar
Duccio, The Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic and Aurea, c. 1312-15, National Gallery NG566. X-radiography shows where the original ring hinges were; it travelled with leather straps. Its near twin is in Boston, and the two may have been swapped by feast day.
Trecento Italy / c. 1320
Sawn crosswise by the picture market
Simone Martini, Orsini Polyptych, c. 1320-33, KMSKA Antwerp. A cardinal's double-sided folding Passion, later sawn through its thickness so both faces could hang flat. Its pieces are now in Antwerp, Paris and Berlin.
Trecento Italy / c. 1320
The altarpiece inside the altarpiece
Giotto and workshop, Stefaneschi Triptych, c. 1320, Pinacoteca Vaticana. Painted on both sides for congregation and canons. Cardinal Stefaneschi kneels at Peter's right, holding out a miniature of the very altarpiece he is standing in.
Trecento Italy / 1333
A Victorian reframing
Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi, Annunciation with Saints Margaret and Ansanus, 1333, Uffizi. The frame you see is a 19th-century reconstruction. The word triptych and this triptych's frame arrived at almost the same moment.
Ghent / 1432
The Mystic Lamb, open
Hubert and Jan van Eyck, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, dedicated 6 May 1432, Saint Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent. Twelve panels, eight painted on both sides. The anchor work of the entire wing-altarpiece tradition.
Ghent / 1432
The face almost everyone actually saw
The Ghent Altarpiece closed, after restoration. Roughly 70 percent of the exterior turned out to be 16th-century overpaint. The painted frames cast shadows matching the real light of the Vijd Chapel. This grey face is what the public saw on ordinary days.
Ghent / 1432
Still missing since 1934
The Just Judges panel, photographed before the theft. It was lifted from Saint Bavo's on the night of 10-11 April 1934 and has never been recovered. The extortionist signed the ransom letters D.U.A. and demanded one million Belgian francs. A Ghent police file is still open, and the Monuments Men and Women Foundation still lists it as WWII Most Wanted Art.
Ghent / 1945
A replica with a king hidden in it
Jef Van der Veken's replacement Just Judges, begun 1939, finished 1945, installed 1957. He painted it on a 200-year-old cupboard shelf and quietly signed it by giving one of the horsemen the face of King Leopold III.
Ghent / 1945
In the Altaussee salt mine
Monuments Man Daniel J. Kern and restorer Karl Sieber with panels of the Ghent Altarpiece inside the Altaussee salt mine, 1945. Gauleiter Eigruber had crates of 1,100-pound bombs stencilled 'Caution: Marble' placed in the mine. The miners removed them on 3 May 1945.
The Netherlands / c. 1427
Joseph's mousetrap
Workshop of Robert Campin, Annunciation Triptych (Merode Altarpiece), c. 1427-32, The Cloisters 56.70a-c. Joseph builds mousetraps: Augustine called the Cross the muscipula diaboli, the devil's mousetrap. Technical study shows the wings were added later and the donor's wife painted in afterwards.
Bosch / c. 1490
The Garden of Earthly Delights
Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, c. 1490-1510, Prado P02823. Dendrochronology puts the oak boards at 1460-66. Seen in the Nassau palace in Brussels in 1517, confiscated by the Duke of Alba in 1568, bought by Philip II in 1591.
Bosch / c. 1490
The third day of creation
The closed Garden: the third day of creation, the flat disc of the world sealed inside a transparent sphere, in grey. Across the top, Psalm 33:9. The world before sin, in monochrome. Open it and the whole catastrophe arrives in colour.
Bosch / c. 1490
The butt music of hell
Bosch's musicians' hell: figures crucified on a harp and a lute, and a choir singing from a score painted on a damned man's buttocks. In 2014 an Oklahoma undergraduate transcribed it and it went global. Musicologists point out there is no clef, no text underlay, and the marks are not chant notation at all.
Bosch / c. 1516
The Haywain Triptych
Bosch, The Haywain Triptych, c. 1516, Prado P02052. Dismembered in the 19th century and sold in pieces: the centre to Isabella II in 1848, the wings scattered. It was not reassembled until 1914.
Bosch / c. 1516
The pedlar refuses the stone convention
The closed Haywain: not grisaille, but a shabby man on a road looking back over his shoulder. Bosch refused the fictive-stone convention and put a living, precarious human being on the outside.
Bosch / c. 1501
The Temptation of Saint Anthony
Bosch, Triptych of the Temptation of Saint Anthony, c. 1501, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. Anthony was the patron of sufferers of ergotism; the burning city and the giant fruit read as mandrake belong to that medical world.
Memling / c. 1467
The pirate triptych
Hans Memling, The Last Judgment, c. 1467-71, National Museum in Gdansk. Commissioned by Medici banker Angelo Tani for Florence, seized at sea in 1473 by the Danzig privateer Paul Beneke from the galley San Matteo. Rudolf II offered 40,000 thalers; Peter the Great asked for it as a gift. Gdansk refused both.
Memling / c. 1478
The donor buys his way into the centre
Memling, The Donne Triptych, c. 1478, National Gallery NG6275. Sir John Donne and Elizabeth Hastings kneel inside the Virgin's own loggia at full scale. This is the top of the donor-portrait market. It entered the national collection in 1957 as a tax settlement.
Memling / 1484
The Moreel Triptych
Memling, Moreel Triptych, 1484, central panel, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Saint Christopher carrying Christ across the water, between Saint Maurus and Saint Giles. Burgomaster Willem Moreel and Barbara van Vlaenderberch kneel with their many children on the wings; the exterior carries John the Baptist and Saint George in grisaille.
Memling / 1489
The Shrine of Saint Ursula
Panel from Memling's Shrine of Saint Ursula, c. 1489, Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges: the pilgrims embarking at Basel. The shrine is a miniature gilded Gothic chapel in oak with painted panels along its sides; the relics were placed inside on 21 October 1489. Not a triptych, but the same logic in three dimensions: a container whose exterior narrates and whose interior holds the sacred.
Van der Weyden / c. 1443
Aimed at the dying
Rogier van der Weyden, The Last Judgment (Beaune Altarpiece), c. 1443-51, Hospices de Beaune. Nicolas Rolin stipulated that beds be placed within sight of it. The dying looked at the Last Judgment from their pillows, through a pierced screen.
Van der Weyden / c. 1443
Donors and fictive stone
The closed Beaune Altarpiece: Rolin and Guigone de Salins in colour, flanked by grisaille Saints Sebastian and Anthony painted as stone statues. The wings opened only on selected Sundays and feasts. In the 19th century the double-sided panels were sawn through, destroying the mechanism.
Van der Weyden / c. 1452
A widow's memento mori
Rogier van der Weyden, Braque Triptych, c. 1452, Louvre RF 2063. Jehan Braque died young in 1452; his widow Catherine de Brabant almost certainly commissioned it. The closed exterior is a skull and a cross, not a saint. She remarried, and still asked to be buried beside him nearly fifty years later.
Van der Weyden / c. 1440
A triptych made by cutting
Rogier van der Weyden, Crucifixion Triptych, c. 1440, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, inv. 901. The museum's own catalogue argues it began as a single panel with a painted frame and was later sawn into three. The unbroken landscape running behind all three sections is the giveaway.
Van der Weyden / c. 1450
The Bladelin Triptych
Rogier van der Weyden, Bladelin (Middelburg) Triptych, c. 1450, Gemaldegalerie Berlin. Pieter Bladelin, treasurer to Philip the Good, founded a town and then gave it an altarpiece with himself kneeling in it.
Van der Goes / c. 1475
The shock that changed Florence
Hugo van der Goes, Portinari Triptych, c. 1475, Uffizi. It reached Florence on 28 May 1483, shipping paid by another banker because Portinari was ruined. Within two years Ghirlandaio had rebuilt his Sassetti Chapel Adoration around it.
Bouts / 1464
The contract that specified bread
Dieric Bouts, Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament, contracted 15 March 1464, St Peter's, Leuven. Two university theologians supervised the programme and the contract required every scene to contain bread. Its wings were sold to Bavaria and Berlin, and returned under Article 247 of the Treaty of Versailles.
Rubens / 1612
The Descent from the Cross
Rubens, The Descent from the Cross, 1612-14, Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp. Commissioned by the Confraternity of Arquebusiers, whose patron was Saint Christopher, the Christ-bearer. Every interior scene is a bearing of Christ. Taken to the Louvre in 1794, returned in 1815.
Isenheim / 1512
The altarpiece as medicine
Grunewald and Niclaus of Haguenau, Isenheim Altarpiece, 1512-16, Musee Unterlinden, Colmar. Two sets of wings, three states. It stood in the chapel of a hospital run by the Antonites, who treated ergotism, and Christ's sores mirror the patients' own.
Iconoclasm / 1566
The Beeldenstorm of 1566
The Beeldenstorm, 1566. It began at Steenvoorde on 10 August and reached Ghent on 22 August; over 400 churches were attacked in Flanders alone. Carved centres burned; flat painted wings were portable enough to be carried out. That is why so many museum paintings are orphaned wings.
War / 1945
Eisenhower inspects looted art
Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton in the Merkers mine, 12 April 1945. The Kaiserode mine held the Reichsbank reserves and the evacuated collections of fourteen Prussian state museums: 393 uncrated paintings, 1,214 cases, 2,091 print boxes.
Theft / 1990
The empty frames at the Gardner
The empty frames at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, left hanging after the 1990 theft. The exact rhyme is Ghent, where the Just Judges frame stood empty from 1934 until 1957.
Ethiopia / 17th c.
An Ethiopian triptych icon
Ethiopian triptych icon, Solomonic period, Walters Art Museum. An entirely independent triptych tradition: local wood, gypsum ground, indigo and orpiment, and hinges of twisted sinew or parchment rather than iron, engineered so the wings open flat.
Ethiopia / 17th c.
The folding book icon
Gondarine sensul, late 17th century, Walters 36.10. An accordion-folded parchment icon with three viewing modes: leafed through as diptychs, stood open at the middle as a free-standing icon, or extended into one continuous frieze. Its owner added a note threatening excommunication against any thief.
Japan / 7th c.
The Tamamushi Shrine
The Tamamushi Shrine, Horyu-ji, Nara, mid-7th century. A painted, doored, portable devotional shrine with jewel-beetle wing cases set under pierced bronze. It predates the Byzantine ivory triptychs by roughly three centuries and the Netherlandish altarpiece by eight.
Japan / 623
The Shaka Triad
Shaka Triad by Tori Busshi, dated 623 CE, Horyu-ji, Nara. Three-part hierarchical devotional composition arrived at independently: a central Buddha flanked by two bodhisattvas against a single mandorla. A parallel of composition, not of construction.
Modern / 1887
Animal Locomotion, plate 758
Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, 1887, plate 758. The first mass-produced modern polyptychs. Bacon owned and cut up Muybridge plates; they survive in his studio archive at the Hugh Lane, Dublin, and a Muybridge pelican becomes a Fury in his 1981 Oresteia triptych.
Modern / 1887
Animal Locomotion, plate 626
Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 626. Sequence broken into a grid: the moment the multi-panel image stops being devotional and becomes analytical.
Japan / 18th c.
A portable shrine for Fudo Myoo
Portable shrine (zushi) with Fudo Myoo, Japan, Edo period, 18th century, Metropolitan Museum 08.74. Sculpture 4.8 cm high, shrine 10.1 cm. A hinged wooden cabinet with doors, opened for devotion and closed for travel: functionally the same object as a European devotional triptych, arrived at independently.

Scroll

Rome / 506
Consular diptych of Areobindus
Consular diptych of Areobindus, 506 CE, ivory, Louvre. Five panels from his single year in office survive, scattered across Lucca, Zurich, Paris, Besancon and Dijon. Theodosius I made ivory diptychs a legally restricted consular privilege in 384.

Rome / 487
Overwritten with the names of the dead
Diptych of Boethius, 487 CE, Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia. Its reverse was overwritten twice with lists of Christian dead, once after 604 and again in the mid-8th century. A pagan magistrate's calling card, recycled as a parish death register.

Rome / 6th c.
Emperor on the front, the dead on the back
The Barberini Ivory, 6th century, Louvre OA 9063. On the reverse, a list of Austrasian kings and prayers for the dead written in the Auvergne around 613. Antiquity's most self-important object, repurposed as Frankish stationery.

Byzantium / c. 940
The Harbaville Triptych
The Harbaville Triptych, Constantinople, c. 940-960, ivory, Louvre OA 3247. The finest surviving Byzantine ivory triptych: Christ enthroned between the Virgin and John the Baptist, ranks of saints on the wings.

Byzantium / c. 940
A paradise nobody was meant to see
The reverse of the Harbaville Triptych: a cross in a starfield between two cypresses, with birds, a lion, a hare and a partridge. Carved on the face that stands against the wall, which is the strongest argument that these objects were never merely protective cases.

Medieval Europe / c. 1156
Byzantium nested inside a reliquary
The Stavelot Triptych, c. 1156-58, Morgan Library. Abbot Wibald went to Constantinople to arrange a marriage for Frederick Barbarossa and came home with two small Byzantine reliquary triptychs, then commissioned a Mosan triptych to hold them. A triptych inside a triptych.

Medieval Europe / c. 1330
Heraldry as the closed state
The John Grandisson Triptych, England, c. 1330-40, ivory with silver hinges, British Museum. Its outer wings carry the bishop's coat of arms, not a sacred image. What the closed triptych showed was sometimes just the owner's name in heraldic form.

Medieval Europe / 15th c.
The form goes miniature
Miniature boxwood triptych with scenes from the Life of Christ, Louvre OA 5612. Roughly 150 Gothic boxwood miniatures survive worldwide; about twenty are polyptychs, 10 to 13 cm high.

Medieval Europe / c. 1500
The triptych shrunk to fit a palm
Prayer nut of Eewert Jansz van Bleiswick, Rijksmuseum BK-1981-1. A hinged boxwood sphere 30 to 65 mm across, carved with entire crowded scenes inside. Micro-CT scanning in 2016-17 finally revealed how they were assembled.

Trecento Italy / c. 1312
A cardinal's travelling altar
Duccio, The Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic and Aurea, c. 1312-15, National Gallery NG566. X-radiography shows where the original ring hinges were; it travelled with leather straps. Its near twin is in Boston, and the two may have been swapped by feast day.

Trecento Italy / c. 1320
Sawn crosswise by the picture market
Simone Martini, Orsini Polyptych, c. 1320-33, KMSKA Antwerp. A cardinal's double-sided folding Passion, later sawn through its thickness so both faces could hang flat. Its pieces are now in Antwerp, Paris and Berlin.

Trecento Italy / c. 1320
The altarpiece inside the altarpiece
Giotto and workshop, Stefaneschi Triptych, c. 1320, Pinacoteca Vaticana. Painted on both sides for congregation and canons. Cardinal Stefaneschi kneels at Peter's right, holding out a miniature of the very altarpiece he is standing in.

Trecento Italy / 1333
A Victorian reframing
Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi, Annunciation with Saints Margaret and Ansanus, 1333, Uffizi. The frame you see is a 19th-century reconstruction. The word triptych and this triptych's frame arrived at almost the same moment.

Ghent / 1432
The Mystic Lamb, open
Hubert and Jan van Eyck, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, dedicated 6 May 1432, Saint Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent. Twelve panels, eight painted on both sides. The anchor work of the entire wing-altarpiece tradition.

Ghent / 1432
Still missing since 1934
The Just Judges panel, photographed before the theft. It was lifted from Saint Bavo's on the night of 10-11 April 1934 and has never been recovered. The extortionist signed the ransom letters D.U.A. and demanded one million Belgian francs. A Ghent police file is still open, and the Monuments Men and Women Foundation still lists it as WWII Most Wanted Art.

Ghent / 1945
A replica with a king hidden in it
Jef Van der Veken's replacement Just Judges, begun 1939, finished 1945, installed 1957. He painted it on a 200-year-old cupboard shelf and quietly signed it by giving one of the horsemen the face of King Leopold III.

Ghent / 1945
In the Altaussee salt mine
Monuments Man Daniel J. Kern and restorer Karl Sieber with panels of the Ghent Altarpiece inside the Altaussee salt mine, 1945. Gauleiter Eigruber had crates of 1,100-pound bombs stencilled 'Caution: Marble' placed in the mine. The miners removed them on 3 May 1945.

The Netherlands / c. 1427
Joseph's mousetrap
Workshop of Robert Campin, Annunciation Triptych (Merode Altarpiece), c. 1427-32, The Cloisters 56.70a-c. Joseph builds mousetraps: Augustine called the Cross the muscipula diaboli, the devil's mousetrap. Technical study shows the wings were added later and the donor's wife painted in afterwards.

Bosch / c. 1490

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, c. 1490-1510, Prado P02823. Dendrochronology puts the oak boards at 1460-66. Seen in the Nassau palace in Brussels in 1517, confiscated by the Duke of Alba in 1568, bought by Philip II in 1591.

Bosch / c. 1516
The Haywain Triptych
Bosch, The Haywain Triptych, c. 1516, Prado P02052. Dismembered in the 19th century and sold in pieces: the centre to Isabella II in 1848, the wings scattered. It was not reassembled until 1914.

Bosch / c. 1516
The pedlar refuses the stone convention
The closed Haywain: not grisaille, but a shabby man on a road looking back over his shoulder. Bosch refused the fictive-stone convention and put a living, precarious human being on the outside.

Bosch / c. 1501
The Temptation of Saint Anthony
Bosch, Triptych of the Temptation of Saint Anthony, c. 1501, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. Anthony was the patron of sufferers of ergotism; the burning city and the giant fruit read as mandrake belong to that medical world.

Memling / c. 1467
The pirate triptych
Hans Memling, The Last Judgment, c. 1467-71, National Museum in Gdansk. Commissioned by Medici banker Angelo Tani for Florence, seized at sea in 1473 by the Danzig privateer Paul Beneke from the galley San Matteo. Rudolf II offered 40,000 thalers; Peter the Great asked for it as a gift. Gdansk refused both.

Memling / c. 1478
The donor buys his way into the centre
Memling, The Donne Triptych, c. 1478, National Gallery NG6275. Sir John Donne and Elizabeth Hastings kneel inside the Virgin's own loggia at full scale. This is the top of the donor-portrait market. It entered the national collection in 1957 as a tax settlement.

Memling / 1484
The Moreel Triptych
Memling, Moreel Triptych, 1484, central panel, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Saint Christopher carrying Christ across the water, between Saint Maurus and Saint Giles. Burgomaster Willem Moreel and Barbara van Vlaenderberch kneel with their many children on the wings; the exterior carries John the Baptist and Saint George in grisaille.

Memling / 1489
The Shrine of Saint Ursula
Panel from Memling's Shrine of Saint Ursula, c. 1489, Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges: the pilgrims embarking at Basel. The shrine is a miniature gilded Gothic chapel in oak with painted panels along its sides; the relics were placed inside on 21 October 1489. Not a triptych, but the same logic in three dimensions: a container whose exterior narrates and whose interior holds the sacred.

Van der Weyden / c. 1443
Aimed at the dying
Rogier van der Weyden, The Last Judgment (Beaune Altarpiece), c. 1443-51, Hospices de Beaune. Nicolas Rolin stipulated that beds be placed within sight of it. The dying looked at the Last Judgment from their pillows, through a pierced screen.

Van der Weyden / c. 1443
Donors and fictive stone
The closed Beaune Altarpiece: Rolin and Guigone de Salins in colour, flanked by grisaille Saints Sebastian and Anthony painted as stone statues. The wings opened only on selected Sundays and feasts. In the 19th century the double-sided panels were sawn through, destroying the mechanism.

Van der Weyden / c. 1452
A widow's memento mori
Rogier van der Weyden, Braque Triptych, c. 1452, Louvre RF 2063. Jehan Braque died young in 1452; his widow Catherine de Brabant almost certainly commissioned it. The closed exterior is a skull and a cross, not a saint. She remarried, and still asked to be buried beside him nearly fifty years later.

Van der Weyden / c. 1440
A triptych made by cutting
Rogier van der Weyden, Crucifixion Triptych, c. 1440, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, inv. 901. The museum's own catalogue argues it began as a single panel with a painted frame and was later sawn into three. The unbroken landscape running behind all three sections is the giveaway.

Van der Weyden / c. 1450
The Bladelin Triptych
Rogier van der Weyden, Bladelin (Middelburg) Triptych, c. 1450, Gemaldegalerie Berlin. Pieter Bladelin, treasurer to Philip the Good, founded a town and then gave it an altarpiece with himself kneeling in it.

Van der Goes / c. 1475
The shock that changed Florence
Hugo van der Goes, Portinari Triptych, c. 1475, Uffizi. It reached Florence on 28 May 1483, shipping paid by another banker because Portinari was ruined. Within two years Ghirlandaio had rebuilt his Sassetti Chapel Adoration around it.

Bouts / 1464
The contract that specified bread
Dieric Bouts, Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament, contracted 15 March 1464, St Peter's, Leuven. Two university theologians supervised the programme and the contract required every scene to contain bread. Its wings were sold to Bavaria and Berlin, and returned under Article 247 of the Treaty of Versailles.

Rubens / 1612
The Descent from the Cross
Rubens, The Descent from the Cross, 1612-14, Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp. Commissioned by the Confraternity of Arquebusiers, whose patron was Saint Christopher, the Christ-bearer. Every interior scene is a bearing of Christ. Taken to the Louvre in 1794, returned in 1815.

Isenheim / 1512
The altarpiece as medicine
Grunewald and Niclaus of Haguenau, Isenheim Altarpiece, 1512-16, Musee Unterlinden, Colmar. Two sets of wings, three states. It stood in the chapel of a hospital run by the Antonites, who treated ergotism, and Christ's sores mirror the patients' own.

Iconoclasm / 1566
The Beeldenstorm of 1566
The Beeldenstorm, 1566. It began at Steenvoorde on 10 August and reached Ghent on 22 August; over 400 churches were attacked in Flanders alone. Carved centres burned; flat painted wings were portable enough to be carried out. That is why so many museum paintings are orphaned wings.

War / 1945
Eisenhower inspects looted art
Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton in the Merkers mine, 12 April 1945. The Kaiserode mine held the Reichsbank reserves and the evacuated collections of fourteen Prussian state museums: 393 uncrated paintings, 1,214 cases, 2,091 print boxes.

Theft / 1990
The empty frames at the Gardner
The empty frames at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, left hanging after the 1990 theft. The exact rhyme is Ghent, where the Just Judges frame stood empty from 1934 until 1957.

Ethiopia / 17th c.

An Ethiopian triptych icon

Ethiopian triptych icon, Solomonic period, Walters Art Museum. An entirely independent triptych tradition: local wood, gypsum ground, indigo and orpiment, and hinges of twisted sinew or parchment rather than iron, engineered so the wings open flat.

Ethiopia / 17th c.

The folding book icon

Gondarine sensul, late 17th century, Walters 36.10. An accordion-folded parchment icon with three viewing modes: leafed through as diptychs, stood open at the middle as a free-standing icon, or extended into one continuous frieze. Its owner added a note threatening excommunication against any thief.

Japan / 7th c.
The Tamamushi Shrine
The Tamamushi Shrine, Horyu-ji, Nara, mid-7th century. A painted, doored, portable devotional shrine with jewel-beetle wing cases set under pierced bronze. It predates the Byzantine ivory triptychs by roughly three centuries and the Netherlandish altarpiece by eight.

Japan / 623
The Shaka Triad
Shaka Triad by Tori Busshi, dated 623 CE, Horyu-ji, Nara. Three-part hierarchical devotional composition arrived at independently: a central Buddha flanked by two bodhisattvas against a single mandorla. A parallel of composition, not of construction.

Modern / 1887
Animal Locomotion, plate 758
Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, 1887, plate 758. The first mass-produced modern polyptychs. Bacon owned and cut up Muybridge plates; they survive in his studio archive at the Hugh Lane, Dublin, and a Muybridge pelican becomes a Fury in his 1981 Oresteia triptych.

Modern / 1887
Animal Locomotion, plate 626
Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 626. Sequence broken into a grid: the moment the multi-panel image stops being devotional and becomes analytical.

Japan / 18th c.
A portable shrine for Fudo Myoo
Portable shrine (zushi) with Fudo Myoo, Japan, Edo period, 18th century, Metropolitan Museum 08.74. Sculpture 4.8 cm high, shrine 10.1 cm. A hinged wooden cabinet with doors, opened for devotion and closed for travel: functionally the same object as a European devotional triptych, arrived at independently.

And the studio

Why we took the name

We were L2D for more than fifteen years. When the team rebuilt itself after 2020 and chose a new name, they picked the one object that already worked the way we do: three panels, made separately, that only mean anything together.

Strategy, design, development. Every project we take runs all three, and a project missing one of them is a panel short.

Strategise
The direction, decided with you and written down.
Design
The experience, spoken and unspoken.
Develop
The thing itself, built to last past launch.

The longer version is in why we rebranded.

See the work

About the studio

Image credits (48 works)

Consular diptych of Areobindus · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Overwritten with the names of the dead · Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
Emperor on the front, the dead on the back · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The Harbaville Triptych · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
A paradise nobody was meant to see · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Byzantium nested inside a reliquary · Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
Heraldry as the closed state · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The form goes miniature · Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
The triptych shrunk to fit a palm · Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
A cardinal's travelling altar · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Sawn crosswise by the picture market · Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
The altarpiece inside the altarpiece · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
A Victorian reframing · Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
The Mystic Lamb, open · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The face almost everyone actually saw · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Still missing since 1934 · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
A replica with a king hidden in it · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
In the Altaussee salt mine · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Joseph's mousetrap · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The Garden of Earthly Delights · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The third day of creation · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The butt music of hell · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The Haywain Triptych · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The pedlar refuses the stone convention · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The Temptation of Saint Anthony · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The pirate triptych · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The donor buys his way into the centre · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The Moreel Triptych · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The Shrine of Saint Ursula · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Aimed at the dying · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Donors and fictive stone · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
A widow's memento mori · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
A triptych made by cutting · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The Bladelin Triptych · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The shock that changed Florence · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The contract that specified bread · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The Descent from the Cross · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The altarpiece as medicine · Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
The Beeldenstorm of 1566 · Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
Eisenhower inspects looted art · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The empty frames at the Gardner · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
An Ethiopian triptych icon · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The folding book icon · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The Tamamushi Shrine · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The Shaka Triad · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Animal Locomotion, plate 758 · Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
Animal Locomotion, plate 626 · Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
A portable shrine for Fudo Myoo · The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Open Access), CC0 / Public Domain (Met Open Access).

What is a triptych?

It folds

It argues

It travels

The face almost everyone actually saw

Consular diptych of Areobindus

Overwritten with the names of the dead

Emperor on the front, the dead on the back

The Harbaville Triptych

A paradise nobody was meant to see

Byzantium nested inside a reliquary

Heraldry as the closed state

The form goes miniature

The triptych shrunk to fit a palm

A cardinal's travelling altar

Sawn crosswise by the picture market

The altarpiece inside the altarpiece

A Victorian reframing

The Mystic Lamb, open

The face almost everyone actually saw

Still missing since 1934

A replica with a king hidden in it

In the Altaussee salt mine

Joseph's mousetrap

The Garden of Earthly Delights

The third day of creation

The butt music of hell

The Haywain Triptych

The pedlar refuses the stone convention

The Temptation of Saint Anthony

The pirate triptych

The donor buys his way into the centre

The Moreel Triptych

The Shrine of Saint Ursula

Aimed at the dying

Donors and fictive stone

A widow's memento mori

A triptych made by cutting

The Bladelin Triptych

The shock that changed Florence

The contract that specified bread

The Descent from the Cross

The altarpiece as medicine

The Beeldenstorm of 1566

Eisenhower inspects looted art

The empty frames at the Gardner

An Ethiopian triptych icon

The folding book icon

The Tamamushi Shrine

The Shaka Triad

Animal Locomotion, plate 758

Animal Locomotion, plate 626

A portable shrine for Fudo Myoo

Consular diptych of Areobindus

Overwritten with the names of the dead

Emperor on the front, the dead on the back

The Harbaville Triptych

A paradise nobody was meant to see

Byzantium nested inside a reliquary

Heraldry as the closed state

The form goes miniature

The triptych shrunk to fit a palm

A cardinal's travelling altar

Sawn crosswise by the picture market

The altarpiece inside the altarpiece

A Victorian reframing

The Mystic Lamb, open

The face almost everyone actually saw

Still missing since 1934

A replica with a king hidden in it

In the Altaussee salt mine

Joseph's mousetrap

The Garden of Earthly Delights

The Haywain Triptych

The pedlar refuses the stone convention

The Temptation of Saint Anthony

The pirate triptych

The donor buys his way into the centre

The Moreel Triptych

The Shrine of Saint Ursula