You have eleven tabs open. I know you do. I can see them from here.

And in all eleven, you're trying to answer one question that ought to take four seconds and instead takes an entire evening: how much is the frame? Not the painting. The frame. The thing that goes round the outside. The thing every single one of these websites has decided to treat as a state secret, revealed only to those who have proven their devotion by filling in a delivery address.

Right. Let's end this. Numbers, in public, no email required, and then we'll go and see what everybody else is hiding.

The 30-Second Answer

The Painting We're Pricing

The Mona Lisa, because it's the one everybody actually buys, and because Leonardo spent sixteen years not finishing it and the least we can do is put it in something decent.

Size: 52 × 75 cm. I've picked that deliberately, and not because it flatters anyone. It's the size Reproduction Gallery advertises the same painting at, so for once we can put two numbers next to each other without an asterisk. It also sits comfortably inside the window where the moulded frames are available, which we'll come to.

The Full Ladder, Two Independent Sellers

Both of these sites list the same frame codes and quote them live on the buy page next to the size selector. No cart, no account, no "request a quote".

Every figure is a live quotation with the frame included. Click any frame code to open the buy page with the size and the frame already selected.

Two things jump out and both are worth your attention.

One: the two sellers are within about $5 of each other on every single line. Which tells you these are not arbitrary numbers plucked from a mood. Frames are priced on the finished dimensions of the object, and the object is the same object.

Two: look at the shape of the ladder. Plastic to wood — the entire range of ordinary mitred frames, from a 5 cm white strip to an 8 cm carved gold profile — spans about $45. Forty-five dollars, across four completely different-looking frames. That's because they're all the same manufactured thing: stock moulding, sawn at 45 degrees, joined at the corners. The face changes. The object doesn't.

Then there's a $100 jump to H24 and another $80 to H36. That's the step from a cut stick to a frame moulded as one continuous piece of wood and gesso, formed at your size, with the ornament running unbroken round all four corners. You are not paying more for a nicer sticker. You're paying for a different manufacturing process, and the difference is visible at conversational distance.

The Same Ladder At Three Sizes

Because a frame price is a function of the piece it goes around, and quoting one size is how websites mislead you politely.

Now look at that print row and then look back up at the H36 row, and let me say the rude thing out loud: putting a $570 moulded gesso frame on a $72 print is an act of violence against your own bank account. Seven times the picture. Everybody who walks into the room will read it correctly, and what they will read is "this person was upsold."

On the hand-painted oil, the ratio is entirely sane — the frame is 40% to 60% of a thing a human being painted by hand. That's roughly the ratio serious framing has always run at. On a print it is not sane, and no amount of gold leaf makes it sane.

Now, The Competition. Bring A Torch.

I went to all seven of the sites you're comparing against and tried to find out what a frame costs. Here is the complete, unabridged, deeply humiliating result.

Five of the seven will not tell you the price of a frame at all. Three of the seven will not put a frame on a hand-painted oil painting under any circumstances. And the two with a real framing operation — which are good, and I'd happily hang their work — are selling you mouldings: profiles milled by the metre, cut to your size, joined at four mitred corners.

So Is $376 For A Frame A Rip-Off?

Here's the honest answer, and it isn't the flattering one.

Against a cut-moulding frame, it's more expensive, and it should be. H24 is $100 above the 8 cm wooden W692G at this size. You're buying 2 cm more width, 2 cm more depth, gesso relief that a router bit physically cannot cut into wood, and four corners where the ornament turns instead of getting amputated. If those four things don't matter for your painting, don't pay for them — the W692G is a genuinely handsome frame and I have no interest in talking you out of it.

Against the sites that don't frame at all, the comparison isn't a comparison. Reproduction Gallery's $385 unframed against $261 unframed here looks like a straightforward win, until you remember you still have no frame. Add local bespoke framing at a Baroque profile in this size and you're comfortably past $700 in most Western cities, with a drive and a two-week wait attached. The $637 all-in, delivered, starts looking less like a splurge and more like arithmetic.

And against a genuine competitor Baroque moulding? Art Prints on Demand's VENIZIANO at 10.7 cm is the closest thing on the open market to an H24 by dimension. It's a good frame from a good European factory. It's also four sticks. That's the difference you're paying $100 for, and whether it's worth $100 is a question about how close to the wall you plan to stand.

The Sizes The Moulded Frames Accept

And add the frame to your wall maths, because the frame goes around the picture: an H24 adds 20 cm to each dimension, an H36 adds 30. A 60 × 90 painting in an H36 is a 90 × 120 cm object. Measure the wall before you measure the budget.

The Verdict

If you're buying a hand-painted oil between 40 × 50 and 60 × 90 and you were already going to spend $280 on a wide gold frame, the extra $100 for the moulded H24 is the best-value line on the order and I'd take it every time.

If you're buying a print, buy the $234 plastic or nothing at all, and spend the difference on a bigger print.

And whatever you do, don't spend another evening trying to prise a frame price out of a website that has decided you must earn it. The number should be on the page. On these two, it is.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does an H24 or H36 frame add to my order?

At 40 × 50 cm, H24 is about $241–$243 and H36 about $300–$302. At 52 × 75 cm, $376–$379 and $457–$460. At the maximum 60 × 90 cm, $475–$478 and $570–$575. Frame price scales with the finished size of the piece, so always read it at your actual dimensions.

How does that compare with the plastic and wooden frames?

At 52 × 75 cm, the 7 cm ornate plastic P919G is $257–$259 and the 8 cm wooden W692G $279–$281. H24 is about $100 above the wood; H36 about $180 above. All four mitred profiles sit within roughly $45 of each other, because they are the same manufactured object with different faces.

Am I being overcharged against the other reproduction sites?

Hard to say, because five of the seven best-known competitors don't publish a frame price at all, and three won't frame a hand-painted oil under any terms. Reproduction Gallery lists the same Mona Lisa at 75 × 52 cm from $385 unframed and refers framing out to third parties. The two with real in-house framing sell cut mouldings, which is a different object from a one-piece moulded frame.

Is a frame that costs more than the painting a mistake?

On a print, almost always. A 50 × 70 print is $59–$61; an H36 on it is over $420, which is seven times the picture and reads that way from across the room. On a hand-painted oil the frame is 40–60% of the painting, which is roughly the ratio serious framing has always run at.

Why does the frame price change so much with size?

Because a frame is a physical object that goes round the outside of another physical object — more length, more depth, more weight, more packaging. The same frame code costs roughly twice as much at 60 × 90 cm as at 40 × 50 cm. This is also why any site quoting "frames from $X" is telling you almost nothing.

Sources

• Live quotations and frame prices from Mus3ums.com and AllPaintingsStore.com, read 11 August 2026.
• Reproduction Gallery — Mona Lisa oil reproduction, 75 × 52 cm from $385; framing services page.
• TOPofART FAQ (prints framed, oils not; 71 cm maximum) and Last Supper giclée listing, €55.33 at 30.7 × 55.0 cm.
• AllArtClassic FAQ; Fabulous Masterpieces; MFA archival replicas.
• Art Prints on Demand baroque frames — profile names and widths; Unique-Canvas framing studio.
• Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (La Gioconda), c. 1503–1519, 77 × 53 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Prices quoted live on 11 August 2026 and change with size, currency and date. Competitor figures are as published on their own sites on that date and are not like-for-like where framing is excluded or outsourced.