Goulet de Costly: King of the Belgians

This lithographed political caricature mocks a Belgian political figure through physical exaggeration. The seated subject, depicted with distorted features, sits amid symbols of administrative pretension—inkwell, documents, official seals. In the background, figures labor and toil, suggesting the disconnect between ruling authority and ordinary workers.

The print descends from the Gillray-Rowlandson tradition of British satirical engraving, adapted here for continental European political commentary. Such lithographs, distributed cheaply and widely, functioned as the mass-media humor and political critique of their day—ancestors to the modern comic strip and graphic satire.