In the first book of Maccabees we read the story of Mattathias: a Jewish priest who stubbornly opposed Antiochus IV who had obtained privileges over the Temple in Jerusalem and had imposed the worship of pagan idols. Mattathias together with his family did not yield to the imposition and professed loyalty to the divine law: for this reason he was ordered to sacrifice to idols in front of the whole townspeople. During the gathering of the people Matthias saw a Jew arrive ready to sacrifice on the altar: the priest could not withstand the affront and killed both the Jew and the king's messenger who ordered the sacrifices. After these ferocious acts, Matthias addressed the population, inciting them to revolt, and not to follow the imposed orders but to follow in prayer and to believe in the divine law to which all were devoted. Then he left with his sons for the mountains.

The theme of the painting competition organized by the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris in 1882 was the biblical passage with the story of Matthias, and thus a very pathos- emphasizing theme. The competition was very important for young painters as it allowed them a year-long stay at the Villa Medici in Rome, enabling them to study the great classics of the past while getting to know important collectors, colleagues and the art world of reference. In 1882, the participants who entered the competition were: Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse, Henri Pinta, Charles Lebayle, Paul Louis Seraphin Jenoudet, Gaston Charpentier-Bosio, Henry Camille Danger, Marius Roy, Lionel Roger and Paul Leroy (who tied for second prize) and Gustave Popelin who won first prize.

The competition was organized in this way: after the contestants had registered, the jury assigned the theme to which everyone had to adhere.

The painters had to make a drawing in the classroom for the compositional idea, the latter was copied onto transparent paper and handed in in such a way as to prove that the idea had been worked out at the same time as the theme was delivered.

Later, artists could process the drawn subject matter onto canvas and deliver it by a deadline. Lebayle's work, along with all the others from the competition, is still kept at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris.

The discovery of this canvas by Lebayle is important in several aspects. Firstly, it is a true rediscovery of a rare painting by this painter who, from the time of his training and his participation in the Salon of 1877 to his first prize at the Prix de Rome in

1886 was specialized in the world of painting and decoration, particularly stained-glass windows. After his return to Paris from Rome, Lebayle began his activity almost exclusively as an inventor and stained glass maker together with Lucien Begule, an activity he later wanted to pursue by opening his own workshop. A few missed work opportunities, probably combined with character insecurity or a melancholic nature and the ever-changing and competitive art market led him to take his own life at the age of 42.

The canvas depicting Matthias' refusal to sacrifice idols has an overwhelming power: in horizontal format, the scene stands out in two opposing parts. On the one side the priest is depicted in a hieratic pose, the ideal pillar of divine law, haranguing the people with his arm raised towards heaven and the two murdered soldiers at his feet, and on the other side the people, dumbfounded and astonished at this spiritual and at the same time physical force.

The influence of the master Alexandre Cabanel is strong and can be found both in the definition of the figures and in the sharp, well-articulated chiaroscuro in the drapery that allows for legibility and depth in the scene.

Observing the copies of the drawings conserved at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, one can naturally see that most painters chose to focus the foreground on the Matthias and the people as a side scene. Only Popelin, Charpentier and Jenoudet vertically closed in on the priest with a strong close-up shot: the pathos was thus not centered on the total scene but only on the protagonist who, through strong contrasts, had to appear bursting and almost imminent in the observer's space. This choice was the winning one for Popelin, while the two runners-up, Roger and Leroy, opted, like Lebayle, for a broad scene in which there were two attractive poles: the priest and the astonished people. The scene thus unravelled could have had the advantage of being interpreted in a modern manner by inserting a biblical tale within an orientalistic market scene.

Lebayle, who exploits the genre of Orientalism very well in this painting, unfortunately had the problem of being compared to a great artist like Cabanel, who was famous but at the same time cumbersome. In fact, Cabanel had been teaching at the Ecole des Beaux Arts since 1864, and many critics complained that his fame and the huge number of pupils affected the results of the competitions. Therefore, being his pupil became penalizing in certain cases due to the large number of winning pupils.

They proposed a modern but traditional style as an alternative to painting of the Impressionist ascendancy, too avant-garde for an academic audience.