De zieltogende Anjouse Monarchie (The Dying Anjou Monarchy)

This Dutch engraving satirizes the succession crisis following Louis XIV's death, depicting the Anjou line as physically collapsing. A nobleman and woman support a dying or crippled figure on horseback while attendants gesture helplessly; a classical building and landscape recede behind them. The print employs the visual language of political allegory common to early 18th-century European broadsheets—personification, architectural symbolism, and exaggerated physical distress to comment on dynastic vulnerability. The composition and engraving technique belong to the tradition of satirical prints that preceded Hogarth and Gillray, establishing conventions of political caricature that would flow into later graphic satire and eventually comic narrative art.