La Samaritaine

Alphonse Mucha

Color lithograph from multiple stones on paper

Mucha Museum, Prague

La Samaritaine is a color lithograph poster created by Alphonse Mucha in 1897 to advertise a theatrical production of Edmond Rostand's play of the same name, performed by the celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris. The poster depicts a gracefully robed female figure — representing Photina, the Samaritan woman of the Gospel of John — rendered in Mucha's signature Art Nouveau style, with flowing organic lines, stylized floral ornamentation, and a luminous mosaic halo incorporating Hebrew text alluding to the play's biblical source material. Born in Ivančice in what is now the Czech Republic, Mucha had established himself as the preeminent poster designer of Belle Époque Paris following his celebrated collaboration with Bernhardt beginning in 1894. The work exemplifies Mucha's mastery of the tall, narrow poster format, seamlessly blending decorative symbolism, typographic invention, and figurative elegance into a unified composition.