The Allegory of the Sorbonne

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes's Allegory of the Sorbonne (1889) was a preparatory sketch for the large mural decoration he created for the grand amphitheater of the Sorbonne — one of the most prestigious French public commissions of the Third Republic. Puvis's monumental murals, with their simplified, pale figures and dreamlike classical settings, were the dominant mode of French public decoration in the late nineteenth century, and the Sorbonne commission placed his art at the symbolic center of French intellectual life. The Metropolitan Museum's sketch gives access to his compositional process for this historically significant project.

Puvis de Chavannes's preparatory oil maintains the distinctive quality of his finished murals — pale, matte color with simplified modeling, figures positioned with hieratic clarity rather than naturalistic complexity. His compositional thinking aims for the kind of legibility that works across large mural spaces, with clear groupings and strong silhouettes.