Can I arrange 3 equally sized subplots in a triangular shape?

Question

To make this clear, I will use an 4x4 grid to show where and how large I want my subplots. The counting goes like this:

1  2  3  4
5  6  7  8
9  10 11 12
13 14 15 16

I want the top plot to be placed over 2, 3, 6, and 7. The two bottom plots are then 9, 10, 13, 14 and 11, 12, 15, 16, respectively. In Matlab, you can use a subplot range, but I believe this only works for single row configurations.

How can I do this in matplotlib? Do I need a gridspec? How would I use it then? The examples are insufficient to understand how I should tackle this problem.

Answer 1

Use subplot with range:

img = imread('cameraman.tif');
figure;
subplot(4,4,[2 3 6 7]);imshow(img);
subplot(4,4,[9 10 13 14]);imshow(img);
subplot(4,4,[11 12 15 16]);imshow(img);

And the result is:

---

A matplotlib solution based on subplot2grid

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.subplot2grid( (4,4), [0,1], 2, 2 )
plt.plot( x1, y1 )
plt.subplot2grid( (4,4), [2,0], 2, 2 )
plt.plot( x2, y2 )
plt.subplot2grid( (4,4), [2,2], 2, 2 )
plt.plot( x2, y2 )

Gives the following result: