吉斯蒙达

Just before Christmas in 1894, the great actress Sarah Bernhardt needed a new poster in a hurry for her play Gismonda in Paris, and the print shop had almost nobody on hand over the holiday. The job fell to Alphonse Mucha, a Czech illustrator no one had heard of. He gave Bernhardt a tall, narrow panel almost life-size, dressed her in shimmering Byzantine robes and a halo of ornament, and let her stand calm and grand from top to bottom. When the posters went up on New Year's Day 1895, Parisians liked them so much they peeled them off the walls to keep. Bernhardt liked it enough to sign the unknown illustrator to a six-year contract, and she carried the same design with her when she toured Gismonda in America.