The painting shows a cityscape with a large cylindrical reddish-brown fortress on the right. In the center, a wide river winds through the city, with people by the riverbank and more people walking along a winding road on the left.

Fanciful View of the Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome

Francesco Guardi (Italian, 1712–1793)

Date
c. 1785
Medium
oil on canvas
Size
18½ × 30 in (46.8 × 76.3 cm)
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 1956.9.2. See the museum’s record
Credit
Gift of Howard Sturges

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

Palette

Closest wall colors:

Fits these rooms

Hang it

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

Print
24½ × 40 in, the whole painting on 30 × 40 in paper
Center
55½ in (141 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.
Fanciful View of the Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome: a 24½ × 40 in print hung above a sofa, drawn to scale on a 12 × 8 ft wall
24½ × 40 in landscape print (62 × 102 cm), centered 55½ 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

No standard paper matches this painting’s proportions closely, so print it whole with a white border, or trim the edges to fill the paper.

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).

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.