This intimate portrait drawing captures Lina Cavalieri, the celebrated Italian soprano and beauty icon, rendered with the confident draftsmanship of a young Leonetto Cappiello working in pencil and colored crayon on paper. The work dates to 1885, situating it among the earliest known examples of Cappiello's figurative output, produced before his celebrated career as a poster artist brought him widespread fame across France and beyond. The modest dimensions, 35.9 by 27.1 centimeters, lend the piece an immediate, almost private quality, as though the viewer has been granted rare access to a working sketch rather than a formal commission. Cappiello's facility with line is already evident here, as is his sensitivity to personality and presence, qualities that would later define his commercial masterworks. Cavalieri herself was among the most photographed and painted women of the Belle Époque, a figure whose likeness circulated widely in print culture and high society alike. To encounter her through Cappiello's hand, in a medium so direct and unmediated as crayon and pencil, is to see a different register of observation than the idealized imagery with which she is most associated. The work is signed by the artist, confirming its authenticity within his early graphic output. For collectors drawn to works on paper from the late nineteenth century, this piece occupies a particularly compelling position. It bridges portraiture and caricature, realism and stylization, at a formative moment in an artist whose influence on twentieth century visual culture proved substantial. Rare in both subject and period, the drawing represents an early chapter in Cappiello's development that the broader market seldom has occasion to examine.