Imagining the Past in France, 1250–1500

The Getty's exhibition of illuminated manuscripts begins in the 13th century, when books were just starting to be translated from Latin to French.

The J. Paul Getty Museum

Los Angeles, through Feb. 6

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Political considerations also trumped fidelity to history, said Christopher Knight in the Los Angeles Times. Where today’s leaders orchestrate triumphant photo ops aboard aircraft carriers or before stadium-size crowds, the ruling class of yore used illuminated manuscripts to bolster their authority. An epic chronicle of Christianity that culminates in the baptism of France’s first Christian king not only asserts that “history is a divinely ordained continuum,” but also says “the powerful people in charge have been put there by God, so don’t get any ideas about changing things.” In one room of this show, a “knockout” 1372 Jean Bondol frontispiece depicts France’s Charles V receiving a beautifully decorated volume that includes the first lines of Genesis and is also “the very book laid out before us.” The message: God made heaven and earth, then put Charles in charge. Here, “the dazzling conceptual solipsism approaches the notion of the word made flesh. It must all be true!”