Royal Melchior 1921

Royalty behaving badly is the delicious joke at the heart of Royal Melchior, Leonetto Cappiello's spirited 1921 advertisement for a French sparkling wine. It is the sort of poster that raises a smile before you have even registered what it is selling.

King Francis I himself makes an eager cameo, reaching greedily for a bottle of the celebrated beverage as though decorum had never entered his head. Cappiello captures the regal appetite to perfection, blending a note of grandeur with a broad wink of humour, so that the crowned monarch becomes a comic accomplice in the pleasures of a good drink. It is exactly the kind of quick, character-driven idea that made his posters impossible to walk past and impossible to forget. By casting a Renaissance king as an ordinary enthusiast, Cappiello flatters the buyer and pokes gentle fun at grandeur in the same breath, and the eager, off-balance pose gives the whole scene a sense of motion that keeps the eye returning.

Leonetto Cappiello (1875-1942), often called the father of modern advertising, remade the poster by hurling bold, witty figures against vivid dark backgrounds so they seemed to spring forward. He understood that a brand needed not a picture of its product but a personality, and this insight steered commercial art through the entire twentieth century. Trained as a caricaturist, he brought a satirist's timing and a colourist's daring to everything he touched.

The Belle Epoque, the 'beautiful era' between 1871 and 1914, was the golden age of the illustrated poster. Colour lithography let artists cover Paris in vivid imagery, and masters such as Cheret, Mucha and Cappiello lifted everyday advertising into collectable art.

With its regal wit and celebratory subject, this print belongs wherever a toast might be raised. It suits a home bar, dining room, kitchen, wine cellar or entertaining space, sparks conversation above a drinks cabinet, and adds a flash of humour to a gallery wall of vintage advertising posters.

Printed to order on premium 189 gsm museum-grade archival matte paper with fade-resistant pigment inks for rich, gallery-quality colour and crisp detail. Choose your size from the drop-down menu - 8x12, 12x18, 16x24, 20x30 or 24x36 inches. Carefully packaged and shipped rolled in a sturdy tube, or flat in the smallest size; frame not included.

This is a faithful fine-art reproduction of the original stone lithograph, colour-matched and printed to archival standards rather than a flat mass-market copy. It preserves the texture and character of the antique poster while arriving crisp, clean and ready to frame.

A witty gift for wine lovers and admirers of Cappiello and Belle Epoque poster art - and a lasting way to bring a piece of vintage advertising history into a home, studio or workplace. Reproduced from a high-resolution scan of the original lithograph; subtle age-toning is part of its authentic historic character.