Vintage Poster Archives
Cappiello E.A. Mele Napoli 1903 | Art Nouveau Fashion Poster
Cappiello E.A. Mele Napoli 1903 | Art Nouveau Fashion Poster
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A woman in a sweeping yellow gown and plumed hat boards a waiting carriage while a delivery boy staggers under a tower of branded Mele hatboxes, the grey ground giving the saturated yellows and reds a clarity that reads across any room. The scene is Edwardian Naples, the client is the Mele department store, and the hand is unmistakably Cappiello's: bold figures, flat colour, the caricaturist's economy of line.
Designed in 1903 by Leonetto Cappiello (1875–1942) for E. & A. Mele & C. of Naples, printed by Officine G. Ricordi & C. in Milan, this poster is one of a celebrated series in which the Mele brothers commissioned leading Italian and European artists to advertise their store. The text, 'Novità per Signora / Massimo Buon Mercato', is lettered in Cappiello's characteristic sage green hand, integrated into the composition rather than appended to it.
Cappiello had arrived in Paris from Livorno in the late 1890s, built his reputation as a caricaturist for Le Rire and L'Assiette au Beurre, then pivoted to commercial poster art with the force of a designer who had worked out exactly what a poster needed to do: stop a passer-by in two seconds. The Mele series sits at the hinge of his early career, contemporaneous with Maurin Quina and Chocolat Klaus, before the bold-figure-on-dark-ground approach that would define his mature work.
Reproduced from a professionally restored high-resolution source as a fine art archival print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper. A considered choice for anyone drawn to Italian Art Nouveau, Belle Époque commercial design, or the Cappiello body of work.
