19 Photos That Accidentally Look Like Renaissance Art

The picture below of revellers in Manchester, captured by Joel Goodman in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2016, became a viral sensation, retweeted 29,000 times, after the BBC’s Roland Hughes noted on Twitter that it resembled a beautiful painting.

Police detain a man while another lies collapsed in the road in Manchester, 1 January 2016.

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Joel Goodman

Pictures like this are often described as "accidental Renaissance", indicating that they inadvertently conform to traditional Renaissance ideas of beauty and symmetry. They often seem to fit the principle of the Golden Rectangle – a rectangle (shown below in pink) used by Renaissance artists where the longer side (a) plus the shorter side (b) divided by the longer side (a) is equal to the longer side (a) divided by the shorter side (b).

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Ron Jenkins

This is based on the formula known as the Golden Ratio:

Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, for example, famously uses the ratio to place the finger of God in exactly the right place.

Getty Images / Lynzy Billing / BuzzFeed

The Fibonacci spiral

Renaissance artists would use the ratio with the visual aid of the Fibonacci spiral, which is created by drawing circular arcs connecting the opposite corners of squares in the Golden Rectangle. It was devised by mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci in the year 1202.

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Above left is a Golden Rectangle with a series of rectangles and one square within it. The numbers represent the way the different sections of the Golden Rectangle are formed. They follow the sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34... The next number can always be found by adding up the two numbers before it.

Above right you can see the Golden Rectangle with the Fibonacci spiral added.

Here is Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Note how all the key dimensions of the room align with the Golden Ratio – although some of the rectangles used within it finish off-canvas.

We found our own modern-day photographs that seem to unintentionally mirror the composition of Italian Renaissance paintings, and applied the Golden Ratio to them...

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Opposition lawmakers crowd around Masahisa Sato (2nd L), deputation chairman of the upper house special committee on security, at an upper house special committee session on security-related legislation at the parliament in Tokyo, Japan, 17 September 2015.

Toru Hani / Reuters / BuzzFeed

AFP / Getty Images / BuzzFeed

Matt Dunham / AP

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Ultra-Orthodox Jews gather for the traditional Jewish wedding for Chananya Yom Tov Lipa, the great-grandson of the Rabbi of the Wiznitz Hasidic followers, in the Israeli town of Petah Tikva near Tel Aviv, Israel, on 14 February 2012.

Oded Balilty / AP

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Children are baptised during a mass baptism ceremony of 700 children in the town of Mtskheta outside Tbilisi, 13 July 2010.

David Mdzinarishvili / Reuters

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People run to shelter from a hailstorm on the beach at the Ob River, the major river in western Siberia in Novosibirsk, Russia, in this photo taken on a smartphone on Saturday, 12 July 2014.

Nikita Dudnik / AP

Wiki Commons

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Revellers enjoy the atmosphere during the opening day or "Chupinazo" of the San Fermin Running of the Bulls fiesta on 6 July 2015 in Pamplona, Spain.

David Ramos / Getty Images

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A resident of Motza Ilit holds paintings as she runs away from her house during a forest fire near Jerusalem, 22 June 2008.

Ronen Zvulun / Reuters

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The camera rolls as actors dressed as historical Chinese soldiers act as though they have been hit by artillery, during filming of "The Last Prince" television series on location near Hengdian World Studios near Hengdian, 24 July 2015.

Damir Sagolj / Reuters

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Pro-government deputies of Yulia Tymoshenko's bloc and the Our Ukraine party (top) scuffle with opposition deputies of the Regions party in parliament in Kiev, 5 February 2008.

Konstantin Chernichkin / Reuters

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Korean Air Lines chairman Cho Yang-ho arrives to testify at the second court hearing of his daughter Cho Hyun-ah, also known as Heather Cho, at the Seoul Western District court in Seoul, 30 January 2015.

Kim Hong-ji / Reuters