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Fantasy on a Magnificent Triumphal Artch

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1765

63 cm × 46 cm

About the size of a bathroom mirror. You would need 3 of them to reach a person's height.

Against things you know the size of

Height: 46 cm
Width: 63 cm
Medium: pen and brown ink, heightened with reed pen and brown ink, some brown wash (laid on eighteenth-century card)
Kind: Drawing
Where the measurement comes from: Measured by the museum. The dimension is the one recorded by the institution that holds the work.
Credit: Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

Five questions, answered from its own record. What is AGAI?

How big is it?: 63 cm × 46 cm. About the size of a bathroom mirror. Measured by the museum.
When was it made, and when is it everyone’s?: Made 1765. It is in the public domain, and National Gallery of Art publishes it for open use.
Whose is it?: Everyone’s to see. It is held by National Gallery of Art: Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund.
How was it made?: Pen and brown ink, heightened with reed pen and brown ink, some brown wash (laid on eighteenth-century card).
Who speaks for it?: Its record at National Gallery of Art. Measured by the museum. This gallery adds nothing it cannot cite.

This work is in the reference only. The gallery hangs a selection of the collection at real size.

One email. The smallest thing in the collection, the largest, and two that hang well together.

Scored on colour, shape, era and scale, the same way the gallery hangs them.