Schijn bedriegt (Appearances Deceive)

This Dutch engraving depicts an ornate theatrical stage where elegantly dressed figures enact scenes of courtship and social intrigue. The print's Latin title—Silens Alcibiade—suggests classical pretension masking human folly. The elaborate frame and theatrical setting mock the gap between polished appearances and base reality, a theme central to early modern print satire. Rendered in the fine-line engraving technique, the composition echoes the compositional ambition of Hogarth's later moral sequences. Dutch and Flemish satirists of this period used such theatrical metaphors to expose social hypocrisy, establishing conventions—layered narrative, visual irony, moral instruction through ridicule—that would flow directly into 18th-century English caricature and eventually the sequential storytelling of comic strips.