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Update: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put online 492,000 high-resolution images of artistic works. Even better, the museum has placed the vast majority of these images into the public domain, meaning they can be downloaded directly from the museum’s website for non-co*mercial use. When you browse the Met collection and find an image that you fancy, just look at the lower left-hand side of the image. If you see an “OA” icon and the words “public domain” (as shown in the example below), you’re free to use the image, provided that you abide by the Met’s terms.

In making this collection available online, the Met joined other world-class museums in putting large troves of digital art online. Witness the 88,000 images from the Getty in L.A., the 125,000 Dutch masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum, the 50,000 artistic images from the National Gallery, and the 1.9 million images from the British Museum.

It takes a little patience. But once you start surfing through the Met’s digital collections, you can find and download images of some wonderful masterpieces. We’ve embedded a few of our favorite picks. At the top, you will find the 1874 painting “Boating,” by Édouard Manet. In the middle, Rembrandt’s “Self-Portrait” from 1660. At the bottom, a 1907 photograph by Alfred Stieglitz called “The Steerage.” And that’s just starting to scratch the surface.

Happy rummaging. And, when you have some free time on your hands, you should also check out another open initiative from the Met. The museum has also put 500+ free art books online. You can learn about them here.

Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2014. We have updated it to reflect some of the changes made in the Met collection over the past decade.

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Related Content:

The British Museum Puts 1.9 Million Works of Art Online

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam Has Digitized 818,000 Works of Art, Including Famous Works by Rembrandt and Vermeer

Download 50,000 Works of Art from the National Gallery, Including Masterpieces by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Rembrandt & More

Download 50,000 Art Books & Catalogs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Digital Collections