Esquisse pour l'escalier d'honneur de la mairie de Pantin : Le Travail sous l'égide de la République amène l'abondance et la prospérité (plafond)

Lévy's sketch for the main staircase of the Pantin mairie presents Labor guided by the Republic bringing Abundance and Prosperity — a programmatic summary of Third Republic civic ideology. The ceiling painting format demanded illusionistic spatial solutions: figures must seem to float or soar above the viewer's head. Republican allegory in this period consistently personified Labor as a noble pursuit, the Republic as a benevolent guide, and material prosperity as the just reward of honest work. This imagery appeared in dozens of French municipal buildings between 1870 and 1914.

The foreshortened figures necessary for ceiling composition are sketched with the di sotto in sù perspective that Lévy would have studied in Italian Baroque ceiling painting. Light radiates from above, flooding the central allegorical group while the compositional borders recede into shadow.