There’s something special about two images placed side by side. They look at each other, answer each other, complete each other. What one shows, the other qualifies; what one asks, the other replies to. Sometimes they’re a single scene split in two; sometimes two different scenes that only make sense together. That format, the work in two parts, has a name from the Greek, diptych, and a history reaching back to antiquity. It’s still very much alive, in museums and on the walls of many homes, where two prints hung together can work as a single piece.
Two folds
The word diptych comes from the Greek di, two, and ptychē, fold. Originally it meant a physical object: two tablets joined by a hinge that opened and closed like a book. As the National Gallery in London explains, painted diptychs were hinged precisely so they could be closed to protect the paintings inside.
That double nature, an object that opens and closes and an image in two parts, lies at the root of everything that followed.
Ivory and wax in Rome
The first diptychs were for writing. In antiquity, two wax-covered tablets joined by a hinge served as a notebook: you wrote into the wax with a stylus and could smooth it over and start again.
In late antiquity a luxury version appeared: the consular diptych, in carved ivory, commissioned to celebrate a man becoming Roman consul and given to friends and allies. Some dozens survive, a few because they were later reused as book covers. Over time the writing surface disappeared and the diptych became a purely ceremonial and artistic object.
The devotional diptych
In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the painted diptych became an object of private devotion. Small and portable, it could be opened for prayer and closed to protect it on a journey.
One of the most celebrated is the Wilton Diptych, painted around 1395–99 and now in the National Gallery, London. It consists of two small oak panels painted in tempera. On one, King Richard II of England kneels with his patron saints; on the other, the Virgin and Child, surrounded by angels dressed in blue. The two scenes are physically separated by the hinge, yet they look at each other: the king gazes towards the Virgin, and the Child leans towards him. It’s a perfect lesson in how two images can make one story.
From altarpiece to avant-garde
The diptych has close relatives: the triptych, with three panels, often a central panel with two wings that fold over it, and the polyptych, with many panels, like the great church altarpieces.
In modern and contemporary art, the diptych shed its devotional role and became a formal tool. Many artists have used it to explore repetition, comparison, before and after, or the tension between two colours or two states of the same image. Andy Warhol, for instance, titled one of his best-known works Marilyn Diptych (1962): fifty images of the actress, in colour on one panel and fading black and white on the other, as we saw in screen printing as an artistic language. And in photography, the diptych is a common way of setting two images in dialogue.
How a diptych works
What separates a diptych from two pictures that happen to hang side by side is the relationship between them. In a diptych, each part needs the other. That relationship can take several forms.
Continuity: a single image split in two, like a landscape whose horizon runs across both panels. Correspondence: two different images that mirror each other, like day and night, or two seasons. Contrast: two opposing images in tension, in colour, form or subject. And dialogue: two figures or elements that look at each other, as in the Wilton Diptych.
Hanging a diptych at home
Two prints designed to go together, or two you decide to pair, can work as a diptych on your wall. A few guidelines.
Same format, same frame. To read as a unit, both pieces should share size, orientation, frame and mount.
A small gap. Between 3 and 8 cm (1–3 in) is usually enough. Too far apart and they become two separate works; touching, and they can’t breathe.
Precisely aligned. Top and bottom edges must line up exactly. A few millimetres out shows badly in a diptych.
Centred as a pair. Above a sofa or chest of drawers, the centre of the diptych, the gap between the two, should line up with the centre of the furniture. There’s more in how to hang two pictures together.
Two that are one
The diptych is one of art’s oldest formats, and one of its most current. It reminds us that an image can need another to be complete, and that the space between two pieces is part of the work too.
Some Bendíra prints work well as a pair, such as Tide and Harbour from the Coastline collection, which share a palette and a horizon.
Keep reading: Symmetrical vs Asymmetrical Gallery Walls and How to Choose Wall Art for Your Living Room.