Our painting, painted on satin velvet, an unusual support, is to be considered the original sketch for the poster of Giacomo Puccini's 'Madama Butterfly' by Leopoldo Metlicovitz.

Among the fathers of Italian poster art and author's posters, whose golden age lies in the decades between the XIX and XX centuries, we can certainly include the Triestine Leopoldo Metlicovitz (1868-1944), coming from a family of origin Dalmatian. From the very beginning he trained as a refined technician at his father's company, starting from the early years to deal with lithography and art graphics; in 1882 as an apprentice at a printing house in Udine and, from 1888, in Milan, in the Tensi company, specialized in the production of papers and plates for photography and, subsequently, in the renowned Ricordi graphic workshops.

In Milan Metlicovitz, giving vent to a fervent creative flair, can demonstrate all his talent, gradually signing covers, postcards, calendars and advertising posters of great value, of iconic beauty (see the 2018 publication by Vittoria Crespi Morbio Leopoldo Metlicovitz alla Scala).

Opera posters play an important role in the Trieste artist's production; in fact, in the last decade of the XIX century, thanks to his friendship and collaboration with the publisher Giulio Ricordi, Leopoldo Metlicovitz established numerous contacts with the lively Milanese theatrical environment. From that moment on, the artist will give life, for some shows, to exuberant posters with a sure visual effect, still today among the most beautiful ever created, which have become one of the masterpieces of poster design. Let's think, for example, of the colorful and elegant Art Nouveau temperie veined with symbolism and dreamlike atmospheres, characterizing the illustrations of compositions by Giacomo Puccini (Madama Butterfly), "immersed in the warm shades of spring pinks, languishes waiting for a groom who has long betrayed her ", to quote Crespi Morbio, and the haughty Turandot with impenetrable and watery eyes, set like precious gems in a proud ivory face, Oscar Straus (Dream of a waltz) from 1909, Italian translation of the operetta (EinWalzertraum).

Depictions, those of Metlicovitz's affiches for works, operettas characterized 'by a pictorialism of disruptive expressive power and undeniable liveliness, and by a skilful use of colors'. Colored lithographs with a strong visual impact in which multiple influences are recognized from time to time: from social realism to the aestheticism of the Sezessionstil; from symbolist iconographies to a classical eclecticism.

Still in the theatrical field, Metlicovitz realizes the watercolors for some series of postcards with scenes from operas (Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Germany); the covers of sheet music and piano transcriptions; the posters for the celebrations of Verdi's centenary in 1913.

At the end of the nineteenth century the Mele Department Stores in Naples entrusted Officine Ricordi with their advertising campaign for their clothing, one of the first on a large scale, and the architects of the success were the posters created by Metlicovitz together with Aleardo Terzi, Dudovich, Cappiello and others.

In 1906, on the occasion of the great Universal Exposition in Milan, Metlicovitz won the competition for the poster that symbolized the fair, dedicated to the Simplon Tunnel.

In 1914 Metlicovitz was also one of the designers, together with Armando Vassallo, Luigi Caldanzano and Adolfo De Carolis, involved in the launch of the film Cabiria, a blockbuster from the silent screen written by Gabriele D'Annunzio, for which he will make four posters. His is also the trademark that is still used today by the Fratelli Branca Distillerie, producers of Fernet Branca, depicting an eagle that grabs a bottle of liqueur with its wings outstretched above a globe. After the collaboration with Casa Ricordi ended in 1938, he concentrated more and more on painting, preferring landscape and portrait and participating in the first editions of the Cremona Prize (1939-1940). On 19 October 1944 he died in his home in Ponte Lambro.