
Drag the print to move it. The painting is shown at true scale; where its shape differs from the sheet the print has a paper border, not drawn here. Prints are sold unframed, and a frame here is only for planning.
The sheet at its true proportions, the rule and the doorway at the same scale. The painting is printed whole; where its shape differs from the sheet, the print has a paper border, drawn here.
The Holy Family on the Steps
1648 · oil on canvas · The Cleveland Museum of Art
For the Holy Family
Sizes
image 8.5×5.8 in on a 10×8 in sheet
The museum’s file supports 18×24 in at 314 dpi; a larger sheet would fall below our floor.
What is dpi?
Dots per inch: how many pixels of the museum’s file go into each inch of paper. Our floor is 240 for sheets up to 20 inches, 180 up to 36 inches and 120 beyond, because a larger print is seen from further away. We never offer a sheet below the floor, and the number on each size is the one you receive.
Hahnemühle Photo Rag, 308 gsm cotton rag · pigment inks · printed to order · sold unframed
Printed to order · the whole painting, never cropped · if it arrives damaged, we replace it
Shipping included in the price to the eight countries we ship to · dispatched in 2–4 working days · replaced if it arrives damaged, nothing to send back.
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Send as a gift
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Christmas: order by Sunday 13 December for delivery in the United States before Christmas.
Christmas: a gift certificate arrives by email the same day, and they choose the painting.
All editionsAbout this painting
Our Lady sits halfway up a flight of stone steps with the Christ Child seated on her knee, her head at the apex of a pyramid of figures. Cleveland reads that geometry as the argument itself: the Holy Family's place in the redemption. The young John the Baptist offers an apple, the fruit of the Fall, and Christ reaches for it; Saint Elizabeth's gesture, the museum says, foretells His death. Saint Joseph sits apart in shadow, his compass both a tool of his trade and a sign of God the Father. Poussin painted it in 1648 for a private patron, Hennequin de Fresne, and studied the light with wax models in a box pierced with holes. The light still lies across her knees.
Sources: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 'The Holy Family on the Steps', Nicolas Poussin, 1981.18, collection page · The Cleveland Museum of Art, object record 1981.18 (print view) · The Morgan Library & Museum, 'The Holy Family on the Steps', Nicolas Poussin, drawing, 1646-48
And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them. And his mother kept all these words in her heart.
Luke 2:51 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner)