Maurice Denis, Illustrating Christian Mysticism

The sheets in this room are the working drawings, not the finished ones. Maurice Denis worked his devotional images in pencil, ink, wash and tracing paper, and Orsay's curator describes the results as concise, high-contrast pages of radiating light and deep blacks, sometimes close to Expressionism.

The book is The Imitation of Christ, a medieval manual of piety Denis read as a teenager and spent about a dozen years trying to illustrate. Ambroise Vollard published it in January 1903 as black-and-white woodcuts. After the Bible it was the most printed book in the world, and Denis's edition was still a commercial flop. You see a selection of the 246 sheets Orsay recently bought, set against pages from an unbound copy of the book, with some of Denis's religious paintings.

It's a display in the graphic arts room (room 41, level 5), covered by the €16 timed museum ticket (€12 on Thursday evenings, open to 9:45pm; free for under-18s and EEA residents under 26).