Le Départ d'un nouveau Don Quichotte

This etching depicts a mounted figure in military dress departing before a crowd of onlookers, a scene invoking Cervantes' deluded knight-errant. The composition—with its precisely rendered figures, leafy trees framing the action, and handwritten verses below—follows the tradition of satirical prints that combined visual mockery with textual commentary.

The Don Quixote reference signals the print's purpose: ridiculing some contemporary political or military figure as a fool pursuing impossible, idealistic ventures. This marriage of image and verse recalls the 18th-century satirists (Hogarth, Gillray, Rowlandson) whose work established print satire as a popular vehicle for political commentary. Such graphics preceded the modern comic tradition, embedding humor, caricature, and social critique in sequential and narrative form.