From the exhibition
Funeral Satire on Daniel Raap
· 1754

This Dutch broadside combines letterpress verse with a funeral satire targeting Daniel Raap, likely a public figure of Amsterdam. The dense poetic text in Dutch reflects the 18th-century tradition of political mockery through print, where satirists attacked opponents via mock-elegies and allegorical processions. Such text-heavy broadsides preceded the visual dominance of later Gillray and Rowlandson caricatures, yet share their irreverent spirit. The format—cheap, widely distributed verse-sheets—made satire accessible to urban audiences and established the popular print as a weapon against authority. This genealogy of text and image ridicule leads directly to 19th-century comic periodicals and eventually modern comic strips, where visual and verbal wit combine to puncture power.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/