The period between ancient and modern times in Western civilization, known as the Middle Ages, extends from the fourth to the early sixteenth century—that is, roughly from the Fall of Rome to the beginning of the Renaissance in Northern Europe. The Metropolitan Museum's collection of medieval art, one of the richest in the world, encompasses the art of this long and complex period in all of its many phases, from its pre-Christian antecedents in Western Europe through the early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic periods. Though administered by a single curatorial department, the Museum's medieval holdings are exhibited in two different locations: in several galleries on the first floor of the Main Building on Fifth Avenue, and at The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan devoted to the art of medieval Europe in northern Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park.

The medieval objects in the Main Building, of which there are more than six thousand, display a somewhat broader geographical and temporal range—pre-medieval European antiquities (that are not Greek or Roman) from as early as the Bronze Age fall under the department's purview and are exhibited here, as are works of Byzantine art from the Middle East and North Africa—while the collection of about five thousand objects housed at The Cloisters is strictly European and starts in the year 800, with particular emphasis on the twelfth through the fifteenth century. Both locations exhibit two- and three-dimensional works of art in a wide range of media, from wooden and stone free-standing and architectural sculpture to stained glass, metalwork, enamels, ivories, manuscript illuminations (typically tempera and gold leaf on parchment or vellum), oil paintings, tapestries, and more.

The collection of medieval art exhibited at the Main Building is particularly strong in Byzantine silver, enamels, glass, and ivories; medieval jewelry; Romanesque and Gothic metalwork, stained glass, sculpture, enamels, and ivories; and Gothic tapestries. Highlights from these and other categories are presented online, organized first by culture and, within cultures, chronologically. See The Cloisters for more medieval highlights and a history of the Metropolitan's only branch museum.

More about the Department and Its Collection

Although the fledgling Metropolitan Museum acquired its first medieval object in 1873, a gift from the son of the financier and collector J. Pierpont Morgan in 1917 forms the core of the medieval collection housed today in the Main Building on Fifth Avenue. (Morgan had been president of the Museum from 1904 until his death in 1913.) The collection has grown through purchases as well as through gifts and bequests, most notably those from George Blumenthal, Michael Friedsam, George and Frederic Pratt, and Irwin Untermyer. Works of art from the Middle Ages were overseen by the Department of Decorative Arts, undifferentiated as to time period, until the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters was founded in 1933.

Among the particular strengths of the works shown in the Main Building are early Byzantine and early European tomb decorations; a series of silver plates of the seventh century representing scenes of David; the Antioch Treasure; the Avar hoard; and Byzantine ivory carvings and enamels. Also displayed are later European ivory carvings and sumptuous objects made of precious metals and gems between the ninth and the sixteenth century; and masterworks of Gothic sculpture and stained glass from such key monuments as the royal abbey of Saint-Denis outside Paris, Notre-Dame in Paris, and the cathedral of Amiens.

The medieval galleries are at the center of the Main Building between the Great Hall and the Robert Lehman Collection. In fall 2000, new galleries for Byzantine and early European art opened in a dramatically expanded and redesigned space that includes an intimate gallery under the Grand Staircase—an area never before accessible to the public. The Main Building is also the setting for special exhibitions of medieval art, often drawn internally from the wealth of objects on Fifth Avenue and at The Cloisters, as well as externally from public and private collections around the world.