The painted ceiling that once crowned the Paris Opera House has been hidden from view for more than 60 years, buried beneath Marc Chagall's celebrated dome. Now a descendant of the forgotten artist whose work lies underneath is threatening legal action to uncover it. In 1962 the French culture minister André Malraux, reportedly bored during a ballet at the Palais Garnier, decided the building's classical ceiling needed a modern replacement. He commissioned his friend Chagall, who spent two years working in secret and free of charge on 24 large wedge-shaped canvases. They were installed over the 19th-century ceiling painted by Jules-Eugène Lenepveu, whom the opera house's architect Charles Garnier had personally chosen and who worked with Garnier as a friend and collaborator. Lenepveu painted his allegorical composition, The Muses and the Hours of Day and Night, in oil directly onto the dome's copper plates. It was listed as a historic monument in 1923. Lenepveu later directed the French Academy in Rome and painted Joan of Arc frescoes in the Panthéon, but his reputation faded with the rise of Impressionism. Arnaud Carayon, president of the Friends of Lenepveu Society, says he has spent three years asking for the original ceiling to be restored and revealed, including two letters to President Emmanuel Macron. He has now instructed a lawyer to go to court. His proposal: since the Palais Garnier will close for renovation from 2027 to 2032, the two ceilings could alternate, each shown for a decade — possible, he argues, because Chagall's canopy was designed to be removable. The idea has defenders and skeptics. Paris Opera director Alexander Neef said the debate has run for six decades and called it legitimate that descendants defend Lenepveu's memory. A Pompidou curator has argued the Chagall ceiling is a complete work of art, a gift to France. For now, the 220-square-metre dome stays overhead while the historic monument beneath it waits in the dark.