Seeing the Sacred is based on a small number of artworks, seven, to give visitors at the end of their tour of the Galerie du Temps, a commentary on one of the themes that runs through it: the sacred.

For each of the three major historic and artistic periods (Antiquity, Middle Ages and modern times), two artworks are compared, one from the collections of the museums of the Nord-Pas de Calais region, the other from the Louvre's collections, in order to investigate a theme more deeply, at the same time as putting the artworks back into context to enable visitors to understand them better.

Three themes have been chosen, the relationship with the hereafter and with the future, salvation and the apparition.