8 October 2026 — 10 January 2027

Maurice Denis: Illustrating Christian Mysticism

The Imitation of Christ was one of the first texts illustrated by Maurice Denis, a project in which he brought together his interest in illustration – “decoration without servitude to the text” – and his Christian faith. A devotional book attributed to the Flemish monk Thomas à Kempis and written in the early 15th century, the Imitation remained a bestseller until the 19th century, when it was still one of the most widely read books. Denis discovered it as a teenager and had long wished to illustrate it. After a dozen years of work he found a publisher in Ambroise Vollard, and the book, illustrated with woodcuts after Denis’s drawings, appeared in 1903. Nearly seventy wood engravers worked on it. The exhibition presents a selection from the roughly 246 sheets recently acquired by the Musée d’Orsay, inviting visitors into the genesis of the book and the artist’s thinking from first idea to finished image. A tireless experimenter, Denis used pencil, ink, wash and tracing to translate religious precepts into drawing. The sheets are shown alongside paintings by Denis and other projects on Christian and spiritual themes, and compared with pages of the final book – of which the museum recently acquired an unbound copy, the form in which it was sold on publication. This arrangement places the drawings within the wider publishing venture that united the Nabi artist and the avant-garde publisher. Curated by Leïla Jarbouai, Chief Curator of Graphic Arts and Paintings, and Matthieu Bonicel, Chief Curator of the Library, Musée d’Orsay, with Cloé Viala, Graphic Arts researcher, and former interns Kimberley Xayphrarath and Camille Provins.

Musée d'Orsay