Collection

Our collection currently contains more than 100,000 works of art and design dating from ancient times to today. 2,134 of these objects are on view in the museum now. 85,762 of them are available online. There are 2,338 recent acquisitions. All of our collection records are living documents. These records are frequently revised and enhanced.

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showing 20 works out of 7056

A pen and ink drawing of a smiling, bewigged French knight. In uniform, he stands facing left, one arm holding a tri-corner hat, the other held up in greeting.

Pier Leone Ghezzi

Le Chevalier de La Motte

Red, white, and black chalk roundel-shaped portrait of a white woman with blue eyes wearing a white cloth head covering. She is in three-quarter view, looking directly at the viewer.

Gérard de Lairesse

Portrait of a Woman Probably Marie Salme, the Artist’s Wife

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Study after Alessandro Vittoria's Bust of Giulio Contarini

Pieter Withoos

Study of Four Butterflies and a Bumblebee

A brown ink and wash depicting three female allegories. From left to right: Charity breastfeeding an infant, Justice holding a sword, and Prudence pointing to a mirror.

Elisabetta Sirani

Study for Allegory of Justice Charity, and Prudence

A bearded and nude Hercules lays across the bottom of the drawing on his funeral pyre. The top half depicts his entering Olympus via chariot, welcomed by the gods.

Abraham Jansz. van Diepenbeeck

Study for the Death of Hercules

A pen and ink and watercolor drawing of boisterous, aristocratic Englishmen seated in high-backed chairs. The bewigged men talk, sleep, and look around the art and marble-bust filled room.

Thomas Rowlandson

A Meeting of Cognoscenti (After Dinner)

John Hamilton Mortimer

Three Heads

A bold watercolor of two light-skinned Muses descending from a dramatic moon-filled sky, one dressed in orange robes and holding a lyre floats above the unclothed other holding a staff.

Gustave Moreau

Hésiode (Hesiod)

A black chalk study of Malchus and the apostle Peter. An anguished Malchus stretches rightward as he fights against Peter’s outreached hand, which appears from off sheet on the left.

Anthony van Dyck

Study for Malchus

A pen and ink with brown wash gestural drawing of Christ’s body being taken down from the Cross by his followers and Mary. The faceless figures create a pyramid form.

Luca Cambiaso

Descent from the Cross

A loosely brushed watercolor landscape painting of a breezy green field of hay and a cloudy but bright blue sky. In the midground, peasants and horses work the hayfields.

David Cox the Elder

The Hayfield

At the center of a cream paper, a drawing of a nude woman in gray with yellow hair. A skirt of white heads and arms juts out from her hips.

Chris Hammerlein

Untitled (Woman on pedestal)

Pietro Perugino

Study of Three Figures (saint Augustine Saint Monica, and the Virgin Mary)

Bartolomeo Pinelli

Neptune and Salacia

Ellen Phelan

Bank III

Jean Baptiste Edouard Detaille

Sketches for French Officers's Uniform

A charcoal drawing of a sculptural, nude male torso seen from behind. The figure is heavily shaded and detailed, and fine lines express detailed contours of the body.

Anton Løvenberg

Study after a Plaster Cast of a Male Torso

A pen and ink and drawing of a deceased man's will being opened. Beside the deceased, one man reads off a paper as others fight for his possessions in anguish.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze

The Opening of the Will

A red crayon and graphite drawing of six seated women. Each performs an action to mark the time of day: awaken, wash, weave, wine, play the lyre, and sleep.

Edward Burne-Jones

The Hours