We look down and across a canal filled with more than two dozen gondolas and sailing boats, and flanked by rows golden-yellow and parchment-white buildings connected by a wide, arched bridge in this horizontal landscape painting.

Grand Canal with the Rialto Bridge, Venice

Francesco Guardi (Italian, 1712–1793)

Date
probably c. 1780
Medium
oil on canvas
Size
27 × 36 in (68.5 × 91.5 cm)
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 1942.9.27. See the museum’s record
Credit
Widener Collection

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

Palette

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Hang it

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

Print
36 × 48 in, filling the paper (trims 0.2 % of the picture)
Center
61¼ in (156 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.
Grand Canal with the Rialto Bridge, Venice: a 36 × 48 in print hung above a sofa, drawn to scale on a 12 × 8 ft wall
36 × 48 in landscape print (91 × 122 cm), centered 61¼ 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

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

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.