Sphinx: different relative paths to same figure possible?

Question

I am new to Sphinx and would like to show the same figure in two different *.rst files.

The first *.rst file "lower.rst" is on the same level as the "figures" folder and I am including a figure in it like this:

.. figure:: figures/figure1.png

The second *.rst file "higher.rst", is several levels higher than lower.rst. In fact, I am including lower.rst in higher.rst like this:

.. include:: relative/path/to/lower.rst.

Unfortunately, in the higher.rst, the figures from lower.rst are not displayed:

"image file not readable" error.

higher.rst looks in the current directory for the figure instead of pointing to the original lower directory.

This question is sort-of addressed here: Can sphinx link to documents that are not located in directories below the root document?, but I still do not understand how to resolve my problem with the information given there.

Answer 1

Put your figures in a directory at the root level, and change your markup to find them relative to the root using a leading /.

.. figure:: /_static/figure1.png

Now from the higher level file, you should be able to include the lower, and both files should display the image.