April-kaart of kaartspel van Momus (April Card or Card Game of Momus)

This Dutch engraved card sheet presents thirty-six playing-card sized scenes of social and political satire arranged in a grid. Each vignette depicts figures in contemporary dress—nobles, clergy, merchants, servants—engaged in absurd or vice-ridden behavior: gambling, drinking, seduction, theft, and folly. The print descends from sixteenth-century German Bilderbogen (picture-sheets) and prefigures the systematic social satire of Hogarth and Gillray. Hand-colored engraving allowed mass production of moral instruction disguised as entertainment. The work reflects Dutch Golden Age anxiety about luxury, status-climbing, and urban disorder, targeting the rising merchant class through crude ethnic and class caricature. Its grid format—sequential scenes without narrative progression—establishes a visual language that would evolve into the modern comic strip.