Madame de Maintenon as Lamenting France

This Dutch-French broadside pairs etched text with an engraved figure of a woman in mourning dress, her face turned downward, hands clasped in grief. She represents France itself, personified as a suffering widow. The print attacks Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV's morganatic wife, blaming her influence for France's military and financial ruin during the War of Spanish Succession. Flanked by Dutch verses and French poetry, the image participates in the Northern European tradition of political prints that fused word and image to lampoon rulers and their advisors. Such broadsides circulated widely among literate classes and presaged the graphic satire that would flourish in 18th-century London and Paris, establishing conventions of political caricature from which later comic traditions emerged.