Iris, Music by P. Mascagni
1898
Though born in Germany, Adolfo Hohenstein became the 'father of the Italian poster' and designed this dramatic advertisement for Pietro Mascagni’s opera *Iris* in 1898. The central figure, a woman in flowing orange robes, looks upward in a trance, surrounded by massive blue iris flowers that tower over her like a forest. Above, ghostly grey faces emerge from swirling smoke, foreshadowing the tragic fate of the protagonist, a Japanese girl sold into a grim destiny. This poster is a textbook example of Italian Art Nouveau (or *Stile Liberty*), capturing the late 19th-century European obsession with Japanese aesthetics—known as Japonisme—while promoting the famous music publisher G. Ricordi & Co.
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- Color lithograph
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