The invention has for its object to provide a thin-film EL device comprising a multilayer dielectric layer formed of a lead-based dielectric material by a solution coating-and-firing process, which provides a solution to problems in conjunction with its light emission luminance drops, luminance variations and changes of light emission luminance with time, thereby achieving high display quality, and a process for the fabrication of the same. This is accomplished by the provision of a thin-film EL device comprising a patterned electrode stacked on an electrically insulating substrate and a dielectric layer having a multilayer structure wherein at least one lead-based dielectric layer formed by repeating the solution coating-and-firing process one or more times and at least one non-lead, high-dielectric-constant dielectric layer are stacked together, and the uppermost surface layer of the dielectric layer having such a multilayer structure is defined by the non-lead, high-dielectric-constant dielectric layer.