Close to us, six people, all nude with light skin, stand or lie intertwined with snakes on a bank of rocks in this horizonal painting.

Laocoön

El Greco (Greek, 1541–1614)

Date: c. 1610/1614
Medium: oil on canvas
Size: 54¼ × 68 in (137.5 × 172.5 cm)
Museum: National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 1946.18.1. See the museum’s record
Credit: Samuel H. Kress Collection

Public domain image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art (Open Access, CC0).

Palette

Closest wall colors:

Hang it

Pick the furniture and a print size to see it to scale on your wall.

Where Print size

Print: 16 × 20 in, filling the paper (trims 0.4 % of the picture)
Center: 51¼ in (130 cm) from the floor
Above the sofa: 8 in (20 cm) from the sofa to the frame
Ideal width: 56 to 63 in over an 84 in sofa
Why this height: Centered at eye level, this frame would not sit 6 to 10 in above the sofa, so the 8 in gap sets the height.

16 × 20 in landscape print (41 × 51 cm), centered 51¼ in from the floor, 8 in above the sofa. Drawn to scale on a 12 × 8 ft wall.

Try it on your wall color

Default greige

Print it

Standard paper sizes that keep this painting’s proportions, the frames that fit them, and how sharp each one prints.

Paper	Filling the paper	Printed whole	Frame	Frame with a 2 in mat	Frame with a 3 in mat	Sharpness
8 × 10 in	trims 0.4 %	8 × 10 in	8 × 10 in ready-made	12 × 14 in custom	14 × 16 in custom	3778 dpi, crisp up close
11 × 14 in	trims 1.4 %	11 × 13¾ in	11 × 14 in ready-made	15 × 18 in custom	17 × 20 in custom	2716 dpi, crisp up close
16 × 20 in	trims 0.4 %	16 × 20 in	16 × 20 in ready-made	20 × 24 in ready-made	22 × 26 in custom	1889 dpi, crisp up close

Sharpness is worked out from the largest file the museum offers. Above 300 dpi a print holds up at arm’s length; 150 dpi is plenty for a picture seen from across a sofa.

Download

Free for any use, including commercial: this image is public domain (CC0).

Thumbnail (WebP) 560 × 445 px from Room Paintings
Web image 843 × 670 px from National Gallery of Art
Print file 2,000 × 1,590 px from National Gallery of Art
Original file 38,035 × 30,230 px from National Gallery of Art
The museum’s record of this painting National Gallery of Art

Public domain image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art (Open Access, CC0). You may print, share, change and sell it without asking. Read what that means on our image license page, and how to get a good result in how to print a public-domain painting.