Collections · Cappiello
Cappiello, restored for print
One figure, one flat dark ground, one idea that lands at forty metres — Leonetto Cappiello invented the advertising poster as we know it, and his classic period now belongs to everyone. We restore his lithographs one by one and sell them as 120+ finished prints. Twenty-four, chosen and annotated by the studio, are below.
frofyprint is our own Etsy storefront — one of the three shops this studio runs. Every sale funds the next restoration.How we restore ·our open ledger
The icons, restored
Le Frou-Frou, 1899
His very first poster, made for the Paris humor weekly he drew caricatures for. The petticoat is a storm of grey ruffles on flat chrome yellow — keep the yellow clean and even, and the black stockings snap back into the dance.
Montmartre debut · four formats
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Chocolat Klaus, 1903
The 1903 poster that made his name: a woman in green on a red horse, and not a square of chocolate anywhere. The joke only works if the black stays truly black — grey it out and the red horse stops rearing.
The breakthrough · four formats
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Amandines de Provence, 1902
A silver-medal biscuit from the 1900 Exposition, eaten by a woman dressed the exact yellow of the biscuit box. The night-blue ground does the holding; the red roses on her hat are the only heat in the picture and they have to stay crisp.
Vercasson era · four formats
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Cognac Pellisson, 1907
A cellar boy shoulders a barrel ten times his size and kicks a heel under it — one figure, one product, one joke, the whole Cappiello arithmetic. The orange barrel must glow against the deep blue or the weight trick collapses.
Vercasson era · four formats
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Parapluie-Revel, 1922
Three dancers under three black umbrellas, rain slanting across a field of orange — his design for the Lyon umbrella house, and the one Lyon never let go of. The thin rain lines are the fragile part; lose them and the sky stops raining.
Années folles · four formats
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Absinthe J. Édouard Pernot, c. 1900–1902
A monocled gentleman watches his companion take the first sip — the whole seduction of the green hour in two profiles at a café table. Printed years before the 1915 ban; the mustard-yellow ground is the drink's own colour and it carries everything.
Belle Époque cafés · four formats
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Deeper into the catalogue
Past the red horse and the champagne — quieter posters that show how wide the range ran.
Corset Le Furet, 1901
The red corset on chrome yellow stopped foot traffic in 1901, and the Louvre keeps his working maquette. The loose scarlet lace whipping off her hip is the drawing's one moving part — it has to stay sharp.
Belle Époque · four formats
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Livorno Stagione Balneare, 1901
Cappiello advertising his own hometown's bathing season, with every word spelled out in strings of paper lanterns. Printed by Ricordi in Milan; the lantern yellows have to glow against that deep evening blue.
Ricordi Italy · four formats
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La Kabiline, 1920
A barefoot dancer flings ribbons in every colour the dye packet promises — washday sold as carnival. The ribbons are the swatch card itself; each one has to keep its own colour against the near-black ground.
Devambez years · four formats
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Sfer-20 Radiola, 1925
One turn of the dial and Berne, Prague, Londres, Rome drift through the room as coloured airwaves — radio drawn as weather, in 1925. The city names ride inside the swirls and must stay legible in the blue.
Radio age · four formats
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Nitrolian, 1929
The painter is still laying the red while a woman in white climbs the steps he has just finished — dry as soon as painted, argued in a single image. The staircase does all the talking; the red must not flatten step to step.
Art Deco turn · four formats
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Superbagnères-Luchon, 1929
A 1929 commission from the Chemins de fer du Midi: three skiers leaning into the fall line below the Grand Hôtel at 1800 metres. The red jacket in front is the poster's flag — it pulls the eye down the slope, so it has to stay loud against the snow.
Midi railways · four formats
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Pur Champagne, 1902
A growers' association in Damery, outside Épernay, hired him in 1902 to sell champagne with no château name attached — so he sold the pour itself, backwards over the shoulder without a glance, not a drop missed. The cream ground must stay paper-quiet; the black scarf's whip and the thin gold thread of falling wine are the only things moving.
Vercasson era · four formats
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Polaire — Le Friquet, 1904
Polaire, the music-hall star with the famously impossible waist, plays the street urchin of Willy's 1904 stage adaptation of Gyp's novel, and Cappiello draws her the way he drew her for the humor weeklies — all silhouette and attitude. The sheet is mostly bare cream, so every fox-mark would show; clean it dead even and let the single green-black figure carry the poster.
Belle Époque stage · four formats
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Amidon au Chat, c. 1905
The Hoffmann starch works had carried a cat on its label for decades; Cappiello simply let the mascot off the box to bat it across the dark. The cat is one flame of orange and yellow on near-black — if the black greys out, the fur stops glowing and the joke goes cold.
Vercasson era · four formats
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Cognac Albert Robin, 1906
For Albert Robin he invented a bird of paradise perched on the barrel, and the house liked it so much it kept the bird as its emblem for the next century. The tail is a fan of single brush-drawn plumes over flat black — each feather has to keep its own edge or the fan collapses into fire.
Vercasson era · four formats
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Automoto, c. 1906
Two goggled drivers loom out of the night behind a chrome-yellow motorcar — driving after dark was still a stunt when the Saint-Étienne constructor ordered this sheet. Almost everything here is black; the drama lives in how cleanly the yellow bonnet and the two white headlamps punch through it.
Early motor age · four formats
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La Fraisette, 1909
A dancer dressed in nothing but strawberries and leaves holds out the bottle of the strawberry aperitif — 'exigez la bouteille d'origine' was the era's whole legal defence against imitators, printed right on the sheet. Each berry is its own red bead against the black; soften them and the skirt turns to jam.
Belle Époque cafés · four formats
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Remington, c. 1913
A red-capped typist hammers at the keys while her pages take off around her like a flock of gulls — speed sold as weather, drawn for the American typewriter's Paris office. The storm only works if the blue and white sheets keep their crisp diagonal edges against the brown; blur them and the wind dies.
Machine age · four formats
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Montre Election, c. 1914
'The chosen one above all others' — the La Chaux-de-Fonds watch house ran on a pun, so Cappiello staged the election: a chain of women in coloured gowns climbing the dark toward one enormous gold pocket watch. That watch face is the poster's only true white, and its tiny red and black numerals have to survive at reading distance.
Vercasson era · four formats
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Laines du Pingouin, c. 1920
A knitter in profile becomes a single black silhouette on chrome yellow, with all the colour the wool house sold spilled as yarn balls around her chair. The balls are scribbled loose on purpose — keep their chalky spiral texture and resist the urge to tidy them into flat discs.
Devambez years · four formats
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Mistinguett — Casino de Paris, 1920
In 1920 Mistinguett practically was the Casino de Paris, and her name runs across the top not in type but as one giant looping autograph. The poster is a single white explosion of ostrich plumes on midnight blue; the feathers must stay warm ivory, never bleached, or her small pink face disappears inside them.
Music-hall Paris · four formats
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Grand Bal Masqué, 1921
An invitation to the Opéra's Mi-Carême masked ball of Thursday 3 March 1921, door prices for cavalier and dame printed straight onto the sheet. Pierrot and a harlequin dance under a rain of serpentine streamers on chrome yellow — every ribbon keeps its own red, green or violet, and none of them is allowed to smear.
Années folles · four formats
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La 15 HP Bellanger, 1921
Fame herself, red-haired and trumpeting, straddles the globe with a Bellanger 15 HP under her — the Neuilly carmaker's showroom stood at 129 Champs-Élysées, and the poster doubles as its address card. Orange sky, blue planet, cream car: three big flats with nowhere for a blemish to hide, so each one has to dry perfectly even.
Années folles · four formats
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The rest of the room
The works above are a taste — the catalogue holds 120+ Cappiello works. Browse it by subject:
Choosing a format
Rolled poster
The cheapest way in — pick it if you already own a frame or want one chosen for the room, not the shipment.
Framed paper
Arrives ready to hang, glass over paper — the classic museum-print look, and the safest default for most rooms.
Stretched canvas
No glass, no glare — texture close to a painting's, and a natural fit for painterly surfaces.
Framed canvas
The canvas texture with a finished edge — the most furniture-like of the four, and the largest sizes live here.
Prices vary by size and format; every listing shows all options in your own currency. Undecided? Ourprint format guidecompares the four honestly.
From the journal
Why is this work free to print in the first place?Cappiello and the public domain — the full guide →