The Metropolitan Museum's collection of Old Master European paintings numbers approximately 2,200 works. The French, Italian, and Dutch schools are most strongly represented, with fine works also by British, Netherlandish, German, Spanish, and Flemish masters. Among its many masterpieces are works by Duccio, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Tiepolo, Watteau, and Vermeer. The Metropolitan also owns one of the world's great collections of art from the 19th and early 20th centuries, In recent years these holdings have been substantially augmented by major acquisitions, including the celebrated Annenberg Collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings.
The 50,000 objects in the Met's collection of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts constitute a comprehensive and important historical collection, one of the Metropolitan Museum's largest, reflecting the development of a number of art forms in the major Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The department's holdings cover the following areas: sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles.
Above: Detail, Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889; Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890); Purchase, The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 1993 (1993.132)
