The Robert Lehman Frame Collection

The Robert Lehman Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses one of the finest collections of frames in the world. Robert Lehman’s interest in picture frames set him apart from many other collectors of his era. The collection he bequeathed to the Museum includes nearly four hundred frames, most of them Italian and French and dating from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. Although he bought most of these frames to display his paintings, a number of them could only have been acquired as works of art in their own right.