Leonetto Cappiello was born in Leghorn, Italy in 1875. Right from his youth he was a self-taught artist. His earliest known works dating to 1889, his early drawings, presented at the Promotrice di Firenze of 1891 unfortunately are lost. In the same year Diego Martelli introduced the young Cappiello to the group of Leghorn artists, and his work as an artist ranges from subject matters that includes portraits, interiors with figures, and landscapes, and he worked on these themes until the end of the century.

In 1898 he joined his brother who was working in Paris and almost immediately decided to settle there. In 1896 he had already published an album of caricatures in Leghorn called the Lanterna Magica (T...