Metro

Art-ful codger Lauder

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has just landed a $1 billion treasure trove of Cubist art, courtesy of cosmetics scion Leonard Lauder.

Lauder, 80, is donating his collection of 33 Picassos, 17 Braques, 14 Legers and 14 Gris works to the museum, which even its director acknowledged has sorely needed a boost in the early-20th-century art department.

“This is an extraordinary gift,’’ crowed Met director Thomas Campbell in a press release yesterday. “Leonard’s gift is truly transformational.

“We have long lacked this critical dimension in the history of modernism,’’ Campbell said. “Now, Cubism will be represented with some of its greatest masterpieces’’ at the Met.

Lauder — the son of late makeup queen Estée Lauder and older brother of Ron — added that he hoped his gift would “fuel New York’s ongoing role as the art capital of the world.

“This is a gift to the people who live and work in New York and those from around the world who come to visit our great art institutions,’’ he said.

His donated works include Picasso’s “Woman in an Armchair,’’ “Oil Mill” and “The Fan, ” as well as Braque’s “Trees at L’Estaque” and “Terrace at the Hotel Mistral,” Leger’s “Houses Under the Trees’’ and Gris’ “Portrait of the Artist’s Mother.’’

The Met called the pieces “one of the most significant groups of Cubist art ever assembled.’’

The museum said the works would go on display for the first time there in fall 2014.

Forbes has estimated Leonard Lauder’s net worth at just over $8 billion.

The former chief executive of his family’s cosmetics empire started out humbly collecting art — as a 6-year-old obsessed with art-deco post cards.

He has since become one of the world’s leading art philanthropists, also donating generously to other city institutions, such as the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Leonard Lauder has made it onto The Post’s Page Six for his personal dalliances, too — most recently, his romance with 54-year-old Linda Johnson, the CEO of the Brooklyn Public Library.

Lauder’s wife, Evelyn, died in 2011 at age 75.