Monnik zijn pij opetend (Monk Eating His Cassock)

This etching depicts a gaunt, gap-toothed figure in monk's habit gnawing at his own cassock—a visual pun on clerical hypocrisy and ecclesiastical greed. The Dutch print tradition frequently lampooned monasticism as parasitic gluttony masked by piety. The figure's exaggerated features and bodily degradation typify early 18th-century caricature's assault on religious authority. The spire visible behind underscores the satirist's target: the Church itself. Such prints descended from Reformation propaganda and fed directly into the graphic satire of Hogarth, Gillray, and their successors, establishing the visual vocabulary of social critique that would eventually inform modern comic art.