From the exhibition
Text Sheet for a Political Satire on Johan Jacob le Sage ten Broek
· 1787

This printed text sheet in Dutch script accompanies an 18th-century political satire, itself part of a robust Northern European tradition of graphic mockery. The verse poses pointed rhetorical questions about a creature—likely a public figure or politician—whose conduct provoked public ridicule. The footnote references "the Poet's sweet revenge," indicating satire's dual nature: entertainment and political weapon. Such broadsides descended from earlier traditions of Hogarthian print satire and prefigured modern editorial cartooning. These affordable, widely distributed engravings and etchings shaped political discourse by rendering opponents grotesque, memorable, and laughable—a precursor to the mass-market visual commentary that would define 19th and 20th-century comics.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/