A room within the Robert Lehman Collection at The Met with red walls displays framed Renaissance religious paintings, a dark ornate chest, and wooden furniture.

The Robert Lehman Collection

About Us

The Robert Lehman Collection is one of the most distinguished privately assembled art collections in the United States. Robert Lehman's bequest to The Met, a collection of extraordinary quality and breadth acquired over the course of sixty years, is a remarkable example of twentieth-century American collecting. Spanning seven hundred years of western European art, from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries, the 2,600 works include paintings, drawings, manuscript illumination, sculpture, glass, textiles, antique frames, maiolica, enamels, and precious jeweled objects.

The collection of approximately three hundred paintings is particularly rich in the field of the Italian Renaissance, notably the Sienese school, as well as early Northern European works. Included in the 750 Old Master drawings ranging from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries is a significant group of eighteenth-century Venetian works, as well as other distinguished Italian, French, and Northern European examples. The collection is also renowned in several areas of decorative arts: Renaissance maiolica, Venetian glass, and antique frames.

Our History

Robert Lehman's parents, Philip and Carrie Lehman, laid the foundation for the collection around 1905, when they began acquiring works of art for their recently completed townhouse on West 54th Street in New York City. Robert Lehman assembled his collection with scholarly knowledge, astute connoisseurship, and skillful negotiation of the art market. Upon his death in 1969, he bequeathed 2,600 works to The Met with the stipulation that they be exhibited as a private collection, reflecting his belief that "important works of art, privately owned, should be beyond one's own private enjoyment and [that] the public at large should be afforded some means of seeing them." A new wing, erected to display the collection, opened to the public in 1975. The Robert Lehman Wing includes a central skylit gallery surrounded by a series of rooms intended to recreate the Lehman family residence. Velvet wall coverings, draperies, furniture, and rugs evoke the ambience of private interiors and serve as a backdrop for this extraordinary collection.

Read more about the history of the collection (PDF).


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Design for a Wall Monument, Francesco di Giorgio Martini  Italian, Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, blue gouache, on vellum
Francesco di Giorgio Martini
ca. 1490
The Annunciation, Hans Memling  Netherlandish, Oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Hans Memling
1480–89
At the Circus: The Spanish Walk (Au Cirque: Le Pas espagnol), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec  French, Graphite, black and colored pastel, and charcoal on off-white heavy wove paper
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
1899
Madonna and Child, Benvenuto di Giovanni  Italian, Tempera on wood, gold ground
Benvenuto di Giovanni
ca. 1470
Holy Face, Gerard David  Netherlandish, Tempera and gold leaf on parchment that has been trimmed and laid down on thin walnut
Gerard David
ca. 1485–90
Two Young Girls at the Piano, Auguste Renoir  French, Oil on canvas
Auguste Renoir
1892
Saints Bartholomew and Simon, Master of Saint Francis  Italian, Tempera and gold on wood, Italian, Umbria
Master of Saint Francis
1266–75
Before Dinner, Pierre Bonnard  French, Oil on canvas
Pierre Bonnard
1924
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