The Kress family home on Fifth Avenue recently went on the market for reportedly more than $50 million, sending shockwaves through the New York real estate world. The art world noticed, too: The home was once filled with Italian Renaissance paintings, 18th-century French furniture, and 16th- and 17th-century Italian furniture. Jocelyn Kress, who is said to be managing the sale for the family, lives across town in a brownstone that has many works of art of its own.

This Thursday, Ms. Kress will give a lecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, across the street from her art-filled childhood home. The museum’s permanent collection includes a trove of 18thcentury French furniture donated by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, founded by Ms. Kress’s uncle. She will talk at the Met about the collection and its impact on American art.

Samuel Kress owned a successful chain of five-and-dime stores, S.H. Kress & Company. Ms. Kress’s father, Rush Kress, took over the business and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in 1945. Although the stores no longer exist, the Kress legacy lives on — especially in the art world.

The collection began during Samuel Kress’s business trips to Europe, where he started looking at art and architecture. By World War I, he had amassed a vast collection of Italian Renaissance furniture, and he then began collecting art. In 1927, he found a dealer in Florence, Italy, who worked with him to begin a collection of Old Masters including Giotto di Bondone, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Fra Angelico, Sandro Botticelli, Giorgione, and Titian.

“He didn’t have seconds of anything but paintings,” Ms. Kress said of her uncle.

One of the paintings from the collection now hangs in the living room of Ms. Kress’s own home. The portrait, by the Florentine Renaissance painter Francesco Salviati (1510–1563), is small and dark, similar to a typical Dutch portrait. A bearded man, dressed in a black coat with a gold chain around his neck, has brown hair peeking out of a black cap.

For a time, the painting remained in the collection of the Russian prince Felix Youssoupoff. The prince fled the country during the 1917 revolution after Tsar Nicholas II discovered he was involved in the assassination of Grigory Rasputin. He escaped with only a few belongings, one of which was the Salviati portrait.

On an adjacent wall in Ms. Kress’s living room hangs “Madonna and Child,” a large 16th-century painting by Bernardino Luini (1480-1532), who was a student of Leonardo da Vinci. Bernardino used the same model for Madonna as Leonardo did for his “Madonna of the Rocks.”

Ms. Kress’s favorite painting, however, is “Bindo Altoviti” (1515), now part of the Kress Collection at the National Gallery. The portrait is attributed to the well-known High Renaissance painter Rafaello, who was friends with Salviati. The painting is small and dark, and depicts a coy Altoviti with long sandy hair and longing brown eyes. Why has the painting been her lifelong favorite? “I just think he’s very sexy,” Ms. Kress said.

The Italian Renaissance antiques and about half of the furniture in the home came from Ms. Kress’s inheritance from her family’s collection. She has bought the rest of it over the years, and her own taste has followed that of her family.

“I grew up with that kind of furniture and it was what I was first exposed to,” Ms. Kress said. “And I just really like it. Also, the auction houses in New York are constantly selling it so it’s easy to get.”

The living room, in which many of these paintings and objects reside, was designed by interior designer John Saladino.

“He made the room very quiet and really made it neutral so that you can focus on the paintings,” Ms. Kress said. “If you have a lot of nice objects, you want to keep other places quiet.”