ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Register of Prints from The Great Mirror of Folly

· 1720

Register of Prints from The Great Mirror of Folly
This engraved register page lists sixty-three satirical prints depicting human folly and vice, bordered by symbolic imagery—caduceus staffs, anatomical heads, and alchemical vessels. The numbered catalog reflects a tradition of moral critique through visual satire that flourished in Northern Europe during the early eighteenth century. Such print series, often distributed as broadsheets or bound collections, offered middle-class viewers sharp commentary on financial speculation, superstition, and social pretension through grotesque exaggeration and crude caricature. This indexing method anticipated the sequential narrative structures later central to illustrated journalism and comic storytelling, establishing visual satire as a vehicle for both entertainment and social instruction.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/