Over 5000 years of art history has just been made available online for free by New York’s biggest museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As well as releasing more than 400,000 artworks for personal and commercial use, the Met has made over 500 free art books available for your perusal.

The MetPublications collection itself comprises over 1,500 art books, online publications, bulletins, and journals spanning five decades to read, download, and browse for free. From ancient Egyptian medicine to Chinese calligraphy, there is much available. Many of these publications may not be affordable for lay students and art amateurs; the gallery’s The Art of Illumination catalog costs a whopping US$220 on Amazon. In this library, the same book is completely free. In fact, users also now have access to out-of-print publications and can browse through expert recommended lists.

Check out some free art books you can get from the Met’s collection below and view the full collection here.

Free art books available for download and print

Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomical Drawings from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (1983)

Christian Dior (1996)

American Art Posters of the 1890s (1987)

The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry (2008)

Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers (1986)

For more resources, here are the best websites for free images and some of the best free fonts.

Source: http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/download-422-free-art-books-from-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art.html
Images: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/titles-with-full-text-online