Pictures that accidentally look like Renaissance paintings
The Fibonacci spiral used by Renassaince artists is placed on top of a New Year's Eve scene in Manchester
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Your support makes all the difference.A photograph of New Year’s Eve revellers in Manchester has become an internet sensation after hundreds of Twitter users discovered its serendipitous likeness to a classic artwork.
The image, captured by Joel Goodman of the Manchester Evening News, was shared by the BBC’s Roland Hughes who remarked that the picture was “like a beautiful painting.”
Some Twitter users even placed the Fibonacci spiral on top to show why the picture appears so agreeable.
The Fibonacci sequence, devised by Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci, is an numerical arrangement in which each number is the sum of the two that proceed it.
The sequence’s growth factor can be applied to many naturally occurring features such as the centre of a sunflower, pine cones and shells.
Renaissance painters used this “Golden Ratio” to position the components of their work in the most in the most aesthetically pleasing way.
Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam famously uses the ratio to place the finger of God in exactly to right place, which coincidentally has been compared to the Manchester night life scene.
Dubbed as “accidental Renaissance”, the Golden Ratio can be uncannily applied to many moments captured through the modern photographer’s lens.
The Fibonacci sequence has previously been laid on to many of the pictures taken of a brawl in Ukraine’s parliament during a debate prior to a vote in the country’s budget for 2014.
Pictures of footballers on the pitch have also been seen as surprisingly painterly, with an image of Mario Balotelli and members of his former team compared to a Caravaggio's Taking of the Christ.
One imgur user has applied the Golden Spiral to a picture of Donald Trump at the Republican presidential candidate debates.
Even popular logos have had a slice of the artistic action. As part of his project Swoosh Art, art director Davide Bedoni has pasted Nike symbols into some recognizable paintings, which slot in with remarkable ease to the iconic canvases.
New obsession by Henry Scott Tuke on #swooshart #boyswillbeboys
A photo posted by Davide Bedoni (@davidebedoni) on
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