Il Comitato di Pubblica Istruzione (The Committee of Public Instruction)

This hand-colored etching depicts a ladder-mounted figure instructing children and adults gathered below, with a street lamp overhead. The scene satirizes Enlightenment efforts at mass education and public instruction during the revolutionary period. The composition employs the visual vocabulary of 18th-century print satire—exaggerated postures, crowded spatial arrangement, and moral narrative through staged action—techniques popularized by Hogarth and Gillray. The print represents the transition from single-sheet political caricature toward the narrative sequential imagery that would define later comic strips. Educational reform became a flashpoint for satire across Europe, where conservatives and skeptics questioned both the methods and motives of state-directed schooling.