Aan den Meelter Tonge-Slyper (To the Master Tongue-Sharpener)

This engraved satire depicts a workshop of tongue-sharpeners—a metaphor for rhetorical tricksters and deceivers. Figures sharpen, file, and polish tongues as tools while others haggle and inspect wares, their nude forms emphasizing base appetites. The Dutch verses mock smooth-talking merchants of words, whether politicians, preachers, or lawyers who profit from persuasion. Executed in fine hatched engraving, the print inherits from Northern Renaissance satirical traditions while anticipating later caricature. The workshop setting transforms abstract moral failing into concrete visual comedy—a method central to Hogarth and subsequent graphic satire that embedded social criticism in busy, narrative scenes rich with emblematic detail.