In the realm of digital photography, a peculiar phenomenon has emerged. A cluster of athletes succumbing to exhaustion at the finish line, pop stars lost in euphoric reverie, and an array of films viewed from a different vantage point on an airplane – all these images are being dubbed "Renaissance paintings" on X, owing to their varying degrees of affinity to the works of 15th-century Italian masters like Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

The European cultural movement initially became an online shorthand a decade ago, when images of a physical altercation in the Ukrainian parliament, a somewhat common occurrence, began circulating. One of the images bore a striking resemblance to the Ancient Greek mathematical art theory further developed in the Renaissance by da Vinci and mathematician Luca Pacioli, which utilized the "Golden ratio" and "Fibonacci spiral" to create the most aesthetically pleasing composition. Users dubbed it "accidental Renaissance," and the phrase stuck in our meme-y vocabulary, altering the way we perceived images online.

On Reddit, over a million people belong to r/AccidentalRenaissance, a community devoted to sharing images that they feel have a resemblance to the paintings of the period.

Matthias Wivel, head of research at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek art museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, and previously the National Museum's curator of 16th-century Italian paintings, described the Ukrainian parliament image as "remarkable" and "quite perfect." He notes, however, that it's more akin to a Roman Baroque painting, the period directly following the Renaissance, due to its complex, interlocking postures and incidental mastery of visual language developed during the former period — specifically, the value placed on rich symbolism and continuous narrative across multiple figures within the frame.

As with most internet trends, "accidental Renaissance" is no longer used to describe photographs that are decisively similar to the movement's work. Once something is part of the online vernacular, its use resonates and gains traction despite its meaning changing throughout the repetitive process. Now, seemingly any image featuring multiple figures could receive the title.

“People use ‘Renaissance painting’ as a kind of shorthand for an image capturing a group of people who are compositionally interesting.”

When a pop culture aggregate account captioned an image of Charli XCX dancing with Lorde at the brat singer's birthday party, "this is like a modern renaissance painting," James Webster, a 31-year-old web marketing assistant at Seven Stories Press in Texas, shot back with a meme. He manipulated a dril post to read, "(me after seeing 3+ people in any context whatsoever) Well well well if isnt the Renaissance painting." The post received 83,000 likes, 20,000 more than the photo.

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