Esquisse pour l'escalier de la Sorbonne : Bernard Palissy ouvrant à Paris, avec la permission du roi, un cour public de minéralogie

Théobald Chartran's esquisse for the Sorbonne staircase depicting Bernard Palissy (1888) was created for the major decorative program of the new Sorbonne building, inaugurated as part of the rebuilding of the French university during the Third Republic. Bernard Palissy (c.1510–1590), the French potter and natural scientist, was venerated by the Third Republic as an exemplar of scientific empiricism. His experiments on enameled earthenware and his geological observations made him a hero of practical reason over superstition, and Chartran's scene depicting Palissy opening a public mineralogy course in Paris with the king's permission celebrated him as a proto-republican scientist. The work is in the Petit Palais.

As a preparatory esquisse, the painting has the looser, more summary handling of a compositional study — the spatial arrangement, figure groupings, and tonal scheme are established without the full resolution of the final mural. The composition conveys the ceremonial and educational character of the scene, with Palissy as the central figure.