Het Groot Balet (The Great Ballet)

This Dutch engraving mocks peace negotiations between the Dutch Republic and Spain through the metaphor of a courtly dance. Nobles and military figures perform an elaborate ballet while common folk (lower left) watch from the margins—a visual joke about who truly benefits from diplomatic theater. The print exemplifies early-modern political satire's use of performance and bodily spectacle to expose power's absurdities. Engraved on copper with dense crosshatching, it descends from the Northern Renaissance tradition of moral prints and anticipates the graphic satire campaigns of Hogarth and his successors. Such prints circulated widely, shaping public opinion by rendering elite negotiations as farcical entertainment—a direct ancestor to the political cartoon and sequential comic form.