Opening November 16, this exhibition will highlight one of the greatest chapters in the history of French art and the development of the French nation. For more than 200 years—from about 1250 to the close of the 15th century—monarchs and nobles in France employed the finest artists of the day to paint the heroic tales of bygone eras on the pages of lavish manuscripts. These illustrations helped the French understand their present and plan their future by celebrating an epic past.

In these manuscripts, the past came alive before the eyes of medieval readers through images of the legendary deeds and adventures of figures such as Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, Emperor Charlemagne, and even the Virgin Mary. These dramatic and action-packed depictions of moral dilemmas, valiant battles, and chivalrous derring-do illuminate the broader conception of history in the Middle Ages, which often encompassed material that is now considered myth, invention, or outright propaganda.