In line with best-selling The Louvre: All the Paintings, and Rizzoli's successful The Hermitage Collections and The Barnes Foundation: Masterworks, this title offers an exquisite tour, unique in its lavish illustration, scholarship, extent, and graceful packaging. As the first large survey published in 30 years, and the first large general survey of the Met's paintings collection it is the first to celebrate the greatest and most iconic paintings of one of the largest, most important, and most beloved museums in the world.

This impressive book’s broad sweep of material, all from a single museum, makes it at once a universal history of painting and the ideal introduction to the iconic masterworks of this world-renowned institution. Lavish color illustrations and details of 500 masterpieces, created over 5,000 years in cultures across the globe, are presented chronologically from the dawn of civilization to the present. These works represent a grand tour of painting from ancient Egypt and classical antiquity and prized Byzantine and medieval altarpieces, to paintings from Asia, India, Africa, and the Americas and the greatest European and North American masters.

This unprecedented book includes an introduction and illuminating texts about each artwork written by Kathryn Calley Galitz, whose experience as both a curator and educator at the Met makes her uniquely qualified. European and American artists include Duccio, El Greco, Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Bronzino, Caravaggio, Turner, Velázquez, Goya, Rubens, Rembrandt, Brueghel, Vermeer, David, Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Degas, Sargent, Homer, Matisse, Picasso, Pollock, and Warhol.

For those wishing to experience the Met’s unparalleled collection or to study masterpieces of painting from throughout history, this important volume is sure to become a classic cherished by art lovers around the world. Iconic works in the Met include: Sargent's Madame X, Velazquez Juan de Pareja, Brueghel The Harvesters, Van Gogh Cypresses; Rembrandt Aristotle and Bust of Homer; Pollock Autumn Rhythm; Emanuel Leutz George Washington Crossing the Delaware; El Greco View of Toledo; Caravaggio Musicians; Vermeer Young Woman with Water Pitcher; Monet Water Lilies; Picasso Seated Harlequin.