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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Dish: The Destruction of the Hosts of Pharaoh, Master IC (probably Jean Court) or French, Limoges, Painted enamel on copper, partly gilt.
Master IC (probably Jean Court)
Jean Cour (or Court)
probably early 17th century
Goblet, Colorless (yellowish), transparent turquoise blue, and opaque brick red, yellow, and white nonlead glass.  Blown, trailed, pincered, "vetro a retorti"., Façon de Venise, probably south Lowlands or Germany
Façon de Venise, probably south Lowlands or Germany
17th century
Margaretha van Haexbergen (1614–1676), Gerard ter Borch the Younger  Dutch, Oil on canvas
Gerard ter Borch the Younger
ca. 1666–67
Emperor Vespasian Cured by Veronica's Veil, Wool, silk, and gilt-metal-strip-wrapped silk in slit, dovetailed, and double interlocking tapestry weave., Flemish, Brussels
Flemish, Brussels
ca. 1510
Warwick Castle: The East Front, Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)  Italian, Pen and brown ink, gray wash
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)
1752
The Adoration of the Magi, Bartolo di Fredi  Italian, Tempera and gold on wood
Bartolo di Fredi
ca. 1390
Portrait of Alvise Contarini(?); (verso) A Tethered Roebuck, Jacometto (Jacometto Veneziano)  Italian, Oil on wood; verso: oil and gold on wood
Jacometto (Jacometto Veneziano)
ca. 1485–95
Saints Bartholomew and Simon, Master of Saint Francis  Italian, Tempera and gold on wood, Italian, Umbria
Master of Saint Francis
1266–75
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