University founder Edward Sorin commissioned Gregori, an Italian artist who had previously worked for the Vatican, to paint the series, which he completed from 1881 to 1884.

In recent decades, however, the murals have faced criticism for their historical inaccuracies and prominent position in Notre Dame's primary administration building, and in September 2020 they were covered with removable prints showing local flora and fauna.

In 1874, founder and former university president Edward Sorin visited the Vatican and hired Luigi Gregori, an artist-in-residence there, to be an art professor at Notre Dame.

[3] In the nineteenth century, Americans thought of Columbus as a heroic figure and a symbol of independence, progress, and faith, which went along with the manifest destiny movement.

An account in the New York Freeman's Journal, published in 1886 in the Notre Dame Scholastic, says that "some of [the] students are young and careless; but the pictures are treated with respect, almost with reverence, and no boyish hand has attempted to deface the walls".

[20] The Reception at Court depicts Columbus presenting treasures of the New World to King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I of Spain: pineapples, nuts, spices, gold figurines, a parrot, as well as several Taíno people.

In The Reception at Court, for example, the natives are depicted holding shields which northern Plains Indians would use and wearing Mandan clothes, whereas Columbus actually encountered the Taíno of the Caribbean.