http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection
Met makes high-rez images freely downloadable
On the website you can zoom into the finest brushstrokes of iconic masterpieces like Madame X by John Singer Sargent, Joan of Arc by Julian Bastien-Lepage, and Juan de Pareja by Diego Velazquez (above).
You can also examine lesser known drawings and watercolors that are rarely exhibited. This pencil study of palms was drawn by William Trost Richards in 1855.
The Met’s caption says: “This uncanny study, probably executed at the botanical garden of the Pitti Palace in Florence, anticipates by several years the conservatory and bower compositions that Richards made a specialty after he fell under the sway of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites. Richards’s sketchbooks of his first trip abroad, in 1855, are full of broad landscape scenery, architecture and statuary, but at the Pitti Palace he dwelt for several days on palms, banana leaves, philodendron and other tropical species. Their intricate beauty alone may well have stimulated the artist, but his unprecedented taste for such motifs probably arose also from his admiration of the tropical landscape paintings of Frederic Church that he had seen recently in New York.”


