The Traffic Game of Brabant and Flanders

This Dutch woodcut satirizes regional and national figures during the War of Spanish Succession through a game-board format. Portraits of political leaders—labeled Hollander, Brusselaar, Gentenaar, Savoyer, Engelsman, Fransman, and Beyerwolf—occupy the upper register, while allegorical scenes and Dutch verse below mock their military and diplomatic maneuvering. The print exemplifies the Bilderbogen tradition: combining portraiture, narrative scenes, and moralizing text to lampoon contemporary politics through popular visual culture. Such sheets reached wide audiences and established conventions—exaggerated features, stock character types, satirical juxtaposition—that would flow into 18th-century caricature and eventually the sequential narratives of comics.