De Kornet van Vuil, Wortel en Besse, Postiljon (The Postilion of Filth, Root, and Berry)

This Dutch engraving depicts a chaotic countryside scene where a grotesque postilion on horseback carries news that a company is full. Aristocratic and working-class figures gather beneath bare trees around water and buildings, gesturing wildly. The image employs physical deformity and crude caricature to mock social pretension and class anxiety—common targets in early 18th-century popular prints. The engraved technique and satirical narrative poems flanking the scene connect to a Northern European tradition of social ridicule through composite imagery, anticipating the political cartoons and sequential visual humor that would crystallize in later centuries.