In this vertical painting, a woman stands near the corner of a dimly lit room, facing our left in profile and looking down at a balance she holds suspended in her right hand over a wooden table.

Woman Holding a Balance

Johannes Vermeer (Dutch, 1632–1675)

Date
c. 1664
Medium
oil on canvas
Size
15¾ × 14 in (39.7 × 35.5 cm)
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 1942.9.97. See the museum’s record
Credit
Widener 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.

Print
21½ × 24 in, the whole painting on 24 × 24 in paper
Center
58 in (147 cm) above the stair line
Woman Holding a Balance: a 21½ × 24 in print hung beside a staircase, drawn to scale on a 12 × 8 ft wall
21½ × 24 in portrait print (55 × 61 cm), centered 58 in above the stair line. 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.