Esquisse pour l'église Saint-Merri : Prédication de saint Denis et conversion des Gaulois. Décollation de saint Denis. Christ en croix. Saint Rustique et saint Eleuthère.

Henri Léopold Lévy was a French history and religious painter who worked extensively on decorative church commissions in the second half of the nineteenth century. This 1873 sketch for the Church of Saint-Merri in Paris — depicting the preaching of Saint Denis, his decapitation, and the Christ on the Cross with Saints Rusticus and Eleutherius — documents one of the foundational subjects of French Catholic identity. Saint Denis, the patron saint of France, was beheaded on the hill of Montmartre and was said to have carried his head to the site of his eventual burial. The Petit Palais holds these church sketches as documents of the ambitious decorative programs that transformed Paris's churches throughout the nineteenth century.

The sketch consolidates multiple scenes within a unified compositional field — a challenge demanding clear spatial organization and hierarchical emphasis. Lévy's academic training provides the structural framework. The handling is necessarily loose at this stage, establishing the compositional logic before the detailed execution of the final mural.