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I have the following sentence.
その白い比いない裸体は、薄暮の背景の前に置かれて輝やいていた 。
I understand the use of ~て in ~ている, but I'm confused by two consecutive verbs using ~て as in 置かれて輝やいていた. Should I understand them just as two separate yet consecutive actions? Or does one complete or modify the meaning of the other?
その白い比いない裸体は、薄暮の背景の前に置かれて輝やいていた。
I'm assuming that 輝やいて is a typo for 輝いて. (Maybe it's a variant spelling, I don't know).
This て is simply 'and'. So 置かれて輝やいていた is nothing more mysterious than "was set and was shining".
You ask about whether one action modifies the other. Many times a clause in て-form can adverbially modify the following clause, e.g.
塀の上に座って食べた
Could be "he sat on the wall and ate" or if you treat the first clause as adverbial it would be "sitting on the wall, he ate". But I feel it would be a bit of a stretch to claim this was the case with your example sentence.
The bit that puzzles me is 比いない, which I'm assuming means "without equal". So altogether we have:
That matchless white body was placed in front of a twilight background and was shining.
Weird sentence. What's the context?
同じ程度のもの。匹敵するもの。 「 －まれな逸品」 → 類いする ・類いない