This Dutch engraving targets a specific criminal figure—a pimp operating in Utrecht's judicial court system. The subject holds a document detailing his crimes, his exaggerated facial features and wild expression rendering him a object of public mockery. The fine parallel-line engraving technique, typical of 18th-century print satire, created affordable reproductions for mass circulation. Such personalized attack prints descended from Hogarth's moral narratives and preceded Gillray's political caricatures. By identifying and ridiculing actual individuals—often society's marginal or criminal elements—these prints served simultaneously as moral instruction and public shaming, establishing visual conventions that would later define comic strip physiognomy and character type.
About this artifact
- Date
- 1786
- Rights
- Public domain — free to view, share, and reuse.
- Restoration
- Digitally restored and hosted by ComicBooks.com.
Part of our mission to preserve and restore the public-domain heritage of the medium.