Chagall’s huge undertaking for realizing the Biblical Message, first of all a “place” of spiritual and artistical meditation, conceived with the Minister of Culture of the time André Malraux with the building of the Musée National Message Biblique in Nice, is constituted not only by the 17 large paintings, but also by the stained-glass windows, the mosaic, the layout and decoration of the garden and the architecture. Chagall even realized a vast production of what are called preparatory works of the 17 large paintings, not being simply preparatory, since some of them are realized even after the painting itself. Among these works, there are 97 pastels, divided into the 17 subjects (The Creation of Man, Paradise, Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise, Noah’s Ark, Noah and the rainbow, Abraham and the three Angels, the Sacrifice of Isaac, Jacob’s dream, Jacob wrestles with the Angel, Moses and the burning bush, The Moses striking on the rock, Moses receives the Tablets of the Law, The Song of Songs I-II-III-IV-V): in respect to the sketches and watercolours we are gazing at something extraordinary and hardly conceivable. The “unaccomplished” and the “perfect” blend; pastel is by its own proper nature dust, powder on paper, but the outcome is extraordinary: the absolute level of chromatic-composition synthesis claims for the masterpiece. On one side we look at the birth of the 17 large paintings, on the other what would be “preparation” is an “accomplished work”. Pierre Provoyeur’s text offers an essential reading to enter the Chagallian method, to insert it into the history of art and to help us deeply taste the extremely high aesthetic level of the complete cycle of the pastels.