De Hollandsche Tuin, van Onkruid Gezuiverd (The Dutch Garden, Purged of Weeds)

This Dutch engraving satirizes the political purges of Amsterdam and Rotterdam's city councils during the Patriot period. Two figures wielding tools attack a garden of weeds—a metaphor for removing political opponents. The architectural setting suggests civic institutions under renovation. As a wood engraving with Dutch verse commentary, it belongs to the Northern European tradition of political print satire that influenced later comic imagery. The composition recalls Hogarth's narrative approach and the Bilderbogen sheets popular in the Low Countries. Like much political satire of the era, it advocates for one faction's vision of civic virtue by depicting rivals as literal refuse to be eliminated—a rhetoric that visual satire would continue to employ well into the modern comic tradition.