The collection features archives and a group of illuminated manuscripts. The thousands of archival documents include the papers of the former Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (minutes, inventories, accounts, and the celebrated academic conferences that were the foundation for the French artistic doctrine of Ancien Régime), as well a number of documents concerning the life of the school, the papers of painter Jacques-Louis David, correspondence from architect Charles Garnier, and unpublished dissertations on Rome’s architecture. Finally, 390 major manuscripts with paintings and illuminated fragments from the 12th to the 17th centuries, from the collections of Jean Masson, Claude Aimé Chenavard, and Achille Wasset.

 

© Compendium historiae in genalogia Christi ou "Arbre de Jessé". 1290 rotulus representing Christ’s  genealogy.