Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located in New York City, is one of the largest and most prestigious art museums in the world. Founded in 1870, its mission has always been to bring art and art education to the public. The museum's vast encyclopedic collection spans over 5,000 years of global history, housed within its iconic Fifth Avenue building and its specialized branch, The Cloisters.

Beyond its monumental scale, The Met holds one of the world's finest collections of Western religious art, preserving centuries of Christian artistic devotion. Its European Paintings galleries and The Cloisters feature extraordinary devotional altarpieces, Byzantine icons, and Renaissance masterpieces created for cathedrals, monastic cloisters, and private chapels across Europe. Among its celebrated sacred treasures are luminous panels by Giotto, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Fra Angelico, and Giovanni Bellini, alongside seminal Northern Renaissance devotional works by Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Albrecht Dürer. The Baroque period is richly represented by monumental Catholic counter-reformation canvases from Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, and El Greco.

Through its pioneering Open Access initiative, The Met has dedicated its public domain artworks to the commons, allowing Ars Sancta to curate, preserve, and share these sacred treasures in ultra-high resolution for prayer, contemplation, and study.