A woman leans forward to trace the shadow cast by a sleeping young man on a wall in a dimly lit room in this horizontal painting. Both people have smooth, pale skin, long, straight noses, thin lips, and brown hair.

The Corinthian Maid

Joseph Wright of Derby (British, 1734–1797)

Date
1782-1784
Medium
oil on canvas
Size
41¾ × 51½ in (106.3 × 130.8 cm)
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 1983.1.46. See the museum’s record
Credit
Paul Mellon Collection

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
16 × 20 in, filling the paper (trims 1.6 % 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.
The Corinthian Maid: a 16 × 20 in print hung above a sofa, drawn to scale on a 12 × 8 ft wall
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

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.