Esquisse pour la coupole du Panthéon (église Sainte-Geneviève) : Clovis et Clotilde

This 1811 sketch on oil paint documents Gros's preparation for the monumental decorative commission to paint the cupola of the Panthéon — the former Sainte-Geneviève church that had been reconsecrated as a secular temple of the French nation during the Revolution and was returned to religious use under Napoleon. The programme included the conversion of King Clovis to Christianity and his consort Clotilde's role in that conversion, subjects that allowed the Napoleonic regime to assert continuity with France's earliest Christian history. The Musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris holds this sketch as a document of the preparatory process for a major architectural commission. Gros's ceiling decorations required him to master the compositional challenges of illusionistic ceiling painting — figures seen from below, perspective manipulations — within his neoclassical manner.

As a preparatory sketch, the paint handling is freer and more exploratory than in finished works. Figure positions, scale relationships, and tonal organisation are established without complete resolution of detail. The sketch demonstrates how Gros worked through the complex demands of multi-figure architectural painting at the preliminary stage.