Italy Wall Art

Italy Wall Art: Give It Room

Nearly every Italian subject is built on depth. A narrow street receding between shuttered buildings, a coastline stacking houses up a cliff, a piazza with figures at three different distances, a valley of cypress and farmhouse fading into haze — the pleasure lies in reading the layers, and reading takes room. Printed small, the detail turns to noise: shutters become dots, the crowd becomes texture, and what remains is a pleasant colour arrangement. As a rule this subject wants the largest wall you are prepared to give it.

Composition types behave differently, though, and the rule has exceptions. A tight crop of a doorway, a stack of terracotta roof tiles, a single lemon branch or a wall of peeling ochre plaster is a texture study rather than a view, and those work perfectly happily at modest size, because there is no distance in them to lose.

Colour explains why this subject spreads so easily through a house. Ochre, terracotta, olive, faded sea blue and warm stone are all earth tones, and they sit comfortably with wood, cream, brass and rattan. Against a cool grey scheme they can look slightly stranded, and the honest fix there is usually a warmer wall rather than a different picture.

Kitchens and dining rooms take it better than anywhere else, partly through the obvious association with food and long lunches, and partly because those rooms tend to have the warm surfaces the palette needs to bounce off. A hallway works too, provided the picture chosen for it is a simple one.

Here is a check worth making before you hang. Notice which side the light falls from inside the image, then position it so that direction roughly agrees with the real daylight in the room. A scene lit from the left, hung on a wall lit from the right, never looks quite settled, and most people feel that without ever being able to say why.