[ noun ] art consisting of a painting or carving (especially an altarpiece) on three panels (usually hinged together) <noun.artifact>
Triptych \Trip"tych\, n. [Gr. ? consisting of three layers or plates; ? (see {Tri-}) + ?, ?, a fold, layer.] Anything in three parts or leaves. Specifically: (a) A writing tablet in three parts, two of which fold over on the middle part. (b) A picture or altarpiece in three compartments.
Performance is also the key to the final part of the triptych, "Championship Wrestling," but in this case performance that implies fulfillment.
A Jackson Pollock triptych, a series of three drip paintings on three canvasses in black, red and yellow brought $2.2 million.
The curtains parted, and there was a triptych with Romeo, Friar Lawrence and Juliet - our first sight of Ulanova, who was to seem that night a genius of the dance in her purity and expressive truth.
The intense shadow composition of the triptych "Jim and Tom, Sausalito" (1977-78) is obliterated by the action in the picture, in which one man urinates on another.
By contrast Kokoschka turned to Hades for a subject and worked on a vast Rubensian triptych embracing Persephone, Prometheus and the Apocalypse, designed for the ceiling of a house in Exhibition Road, Kensington.