Art Gifts for Christmas 2026: Vintage Posters, Classic Prints and a Book
Looking for a gift that will still be on the wall in ten years? This year we have put together our favourite art gifts in one place: famous paintings reimagined as vintage posters, the classic prints our readers buy most, and our book about the thirty most famous paintings in history. Every picture here comes with a story, and every story is on this blog, so the gift arrives with something to read as well as something to hang.
🎁 See the vintage poster collection →
Vintage posters: 27 famous paintings, from the Mona Lisa to The Starry Night
Classic prints: 8 gift ideas from our best sellers
Book: The 30 Most Famous Paintings in the History of Art
Formats: prints, framed prints, canvas, posters and more, in many sizes
Tip: order early, and check the delivery estimate before you pay
Famous paintings as vintage posters
These are the pictures everybody knows, redesigned by Sapiens Verbum in the style of an early twentieth-century poster: flat colours, an ornamental frame and the title lettered at the foot. They make an easy gift for someone who loves art but already owns the usual reproductions, and they look good in a simple black or wooden frame.
Mona Lisa
Leonardo da Vinci. The most famous smile in the world, framed in Art Deco gold.
Get the poster →Read the essay
The Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh’s swirling night sky, painted at the asylum of Saint-Rémy in 1889.
Get the poster →Read the essay
The Birth of Venus
Sandro Botticelli. The goddess on her shell, the winds and the roses, as a classic poster.
Get the poster →Read the essay
The Creation of Adam
Michelangelo. The two almost-touching hands of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, in Art Nouveau style.
Get the poster →Read the essay
Las Meninas
Diego Velázquez. The little princess, her maids, the painter and the mirror, in an Art Nouveau frame.
Get the poster →Read the essay
The Last Supper
Leonardo da Vinci. The moment Christ announces the betrayal, from the refectory wall in Milan, as an Art Nouveau poster.
Get the poster →Read the essay
The School of Athens
Raphael. Plato, Aristotle and the great minds of antiquity gathered under one vaulted hall.
Get the poster →Read the essay
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Johannes Vermeer. The glance over the shoulder and the famous pearl, in an Art Nouveau frame.
Get the poster →Read the essay
The Scream
Edvard Munch. Munch’s figure under a blood-red sky: the most famous image of anxiety in art.
Get the poster →Read the essay
Saturn Devouring His Son
Francisco de Goya. The darkest of Goya’s Black Paintings: a gift for the lover of horror and of the Prado.
Get the poster →Read the essay
Olympia
Édouard Manet. Manet’s defiant nude, the picture that scandalised the Paris Salon of 1865.
Get the poster →
The Milkmaid
Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer’s quiet kitchen and its thin stream of milk: a calm picture for a kitchen or a dining room.
Get the poster →Read the essay
Salvator Mundi
Leonardo da Vinci. The most expensive painting ever sold, reimagined as an Art Nouveau icon.
Get the poster →Read the essay
The Nightmare
Henry Fuseli. A sleeping woman, a demon on her chest and a ghostly horse: the most famous bad dream in art.
Get the poster →Read the essay
Argos and Odysseus
Briton Rivière. The old dog who recognised his master after twenty years. Our best-selling painting, now as a poster.
Get the poster →Read the essay
The Accolade
Edmund Blair Leighton. A queen knights a kneeling young man: the romance of chivalry in one moment.
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The Meeting on the Turret Stairs
Frederic William Burton. A knight kisses a lady’s arm on a narrow stair: one of Ireland’s best-loved paintings.
Get the poster →Read the essay
Christ on the Cross
Carl Bloch. Bloch’s Crucifixion from Frederiksborg Castle, recast as an Art Nouveau poster.
Get the poster →Read the essay
The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism
Gustave Doré. Doré’s vision of the old gods falling from a sky full of light.
Get the poster →Read the essay
The Light of the World
William Holman Hunt. Christ with a lantern knocks at a door with no handle: the Pre-Raphaelite picture that toured the world.
Get the poster →Read the essay
Christ Carrying the Cross
El Greco. Christ embraces the cross and looks up to heaven: El Greco at his most spiritual.
Get the poster →Read the essay
Pietà (after Delacroix)
Vincent van Gogh. Mary mourning her son, painted in blue and yellow at the asylum of Saint-Rémy in 1889.
Get the poster →Read the essay
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary
Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer’s largest painting and his only Bible scene: Martha brings the bread while Mary listens.
Get the poster →Read the essay
Virgin of Guadalupe
Mexican school. The starry mantle, the golden rays and the four apparitions, in a frame of roses and lilies.
Get the poster →Read the essay
Agnus Dei
Francisco de Zurbarán. A single bound lamb against a black wall: Zurbarán’s quietest and most moving picture.
Get the poster →Read the essay
The Isle of the Dead
Arnold Böcklin. A silent boat glides towards an island of cypresses: the picture that hung over the desks of Lenin and Freud.
Get the poster →Read the essay
The Taking of Christ
Caravaggio. Judas’s kiss in the dark: the lost Caravaggio found in a Dublin dining room in 1990.
Get the poster →Read the essayGift ideas from our best-selling prints
These are the classic paintings our readers order most often. We have matched each one to a kind of person, but they are only suggestions: the best gift is the picture that makes you think of someone the moment you see it.
For the dog lover: Argos and Odysseus
After twenty years away, Odysseus comes home in disguise, and only his old dog Argos knows him. By far our best-selling print, and the one people write to us about.
Choose your size and frame →Read the essay
For the chess player: The Chess Players
A young man plays chess against the Devil for his soul, while an angel watches over the board. A conversation piece for any games room.
Choose your size and frame →Read the essay
For the book lover: The Literary Quintet
Five women, one book and a summer terrace: a reading party caught in the last years before the First World War.
Choose your size and frame →Read the essay
For someone who loves London: The Houses of Parliament, Sunset
Westminster dissolving into pink and violet fog: Monet’s London, painted from across the Thames.
Choose your size and frame →Read the essay
For a cosy winter wall: The Lamplighter
One man, one gas lamp and a wet street at dusk, painted by the Danish chronicler of city life. Perfect for the darkest weeks of the year.
Choose your size and frame →Read the essay
For the nature lover: Green Wheat Fields, Auvers
A field of young wheat under a restless sky, painted in the last summer of Van Gogh’s life.
Choose your size and frame →Read the essay
For the lover of myths: Psyche Opening the Golden Box
Psyche disobeys one last time and lifts the lid of Proserpina’s box. Waterhouse at his most romantic.
Choose your size and frame →Read the essay
For a person of faith: Jesus and Peter on the Water
A small boat, a dark sea, and a hand held out to the disciple who began to sink.
Choose your size and frame →Read the essay
For readers: our book
From the Mona Lisa to The Scream, thirty pictures everybody knows and the stories that are usually told about them wrongly. Each chapter takes one painting, the myth around it and the history behind it. Short chapters, no jargon. On Kindle, in paperback, in hardcover and as an audiobook. Pair it with one of the posters above, and the gift tells its own story.
Get the book →See all 30 paintings →
Tips for giving art
- Order early. Every print is made to order, so check the delivery estimate before you pay, especially in December.
- Choose the size for the wall, not the screen. Above a sofa or a bed, a larger print works better; in a hallway or a study, a smaller framed print is easier to place.
- A frame makes it ready to hang. A framed print or a canvas saves the person you give it to a trip to the framer.
- Add the story. Send the link to the essay with the gift. A painting is easier to love when you know what is happening in it.
💬 Over to you: Which painting would you most like to find under the tree this year? Tell us in the comments.
Browse the full collections in the Sapiens Verbum print shop and find the painting that fits the person.
Vintage posters → The 30 most famous paintings → Our best sellers →
Printed and shipped by Fine Art America · 30-day money-back guarantee
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