The Robert Lehman Collection does not have a spectacular profile at the Metropolitan Museum, but it relates (often discreetly) to many of the museum's more conspicuous departments.
When it opened 25 years ago, it formed almost a separate museum within the museum. Not everyone liked that idea at the time, and not everyone likes it now. But such has been the enormous and unpredicted expansion of the rest of the museum that the Lehman Collection now leads a specific life all its own. And from time to time it puts its greatest strengths on view, as is now the case with ''Northern Renaissance Drawings and Illuminations.''
The collection as a whole is the subject of a majestic continuing series of catalogs. Sixteen were announced. Seven have been on sale for some time; two more have just appeared. One is Volume 4 in the series (''Illuminations''). The other is Volume 7 (''15th- to 18th-Century European Drawings: Central Europe, the Netherlands, France, England'').
Their publication is being marked by extensive but never overloaded exhibitions in the Lehman wing that relate to one or another of the new catalogs. Visitors can sit down and consult the two new catalogs at their leisure. Such is the abundance of information on offer that I cannot recommend this too highly. Volume 4, in particular, was worked over for many years. In the words of Prof. Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann of New York's Institute of Fine Arts, it ''combines new insights with judicious reformulation of known data.'' Many of the illuminations are among the micromasterworks of Western European art.
Robert Lehman is known to have seen illuminations as the natural extension and corollary of the early Italian paintings that he and his father collected in the early part of the last century. Their jeweled color, their abundance of well-judged detail and the instinctive poetry that characterized their every touch are a privilege to witness.
It was also characteristic of Lehman that when dealing with drawings he never ran for cover at the words ''possibly by,'' ''attributed to,'' ''follower of,'' ''circle of'' or even ''copy after.'' He knew how much there is to enjoy, and to learn from, in drawings that were once attributed to a great name but have lost it somewhere along the road. Authenticity can be disproved, but the first shock of enjoyment cannot.
Sometimes, on the other hand, authenticity holds firm. This is true of the seven drawings by Rembrandt in the collection. Professor Havekamp-Begemann says in his foreword to the newly published Volume 7 of the Lehman drawings catalog that they are ''impressive not merely for their sheer number, particularly since in recent decades a better understanding of the distinction between Rembrandt's own world and that of his pupils and imitators has drastically reduced the number of his accepted works, but also, and especially, they stand out for their quality and significance.''
Any group of Rembrandt drawings that begins with ''The Last Supper, After Leonardo da Vinci'' (one of Rembrandt's largest) and ends with the wonderfully mischievous ''Satire of Art Criticism'' would arouse notice anywhere. So would the Rembrandt ''Two Cottages,'' which Professor Havekamp-Begemann describes as ''a brilliant combination of the summary and the specific.''
Among other great names, that of Durer ranks high among the draftsmen now on view in the Lehman wing. There is a particular intensity about the sheet that has on one side a self-portrait of Durer that relates to his self-portrait of 1493 in the Louvre. On the other side is something rather extraordinary in its way: a group of six pillows. All of them have been punched and pulled into strange shapes by Durer. One or two can be read as faces, but disagreements on this subject are brisk.
Names are not everything in drawing. The monumental drawing of St. John the Evangelist, which Lehman bought late in his life, has not as yet been identified beyond ''Upper Rhine, Switzerland (circa 1480).'' But he is a splendid, committed, boisterous evocation of Christ's favorite disciple, who did not hesitate to drink poison when challenged to do so (and survived). Another example is a really very peculiar drawing of ''Men Shoveling Chairs,'' which is here given to the circle of Rogier van der Weyden. It is a study for one of three capitals made from 1445 to 1450 for the town hall in Brussels. This was the time when van der Weyden had the title of town painter in Brussels. The nature of his duties is not quite clear, but it is an ''educated guess'' to suppose that he knew the sculptor concerned, or least knew of the project. In any case, this is a drawing with a subject like no other.
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