Carlo Pellegrini, 'Men of the Day No. 18' — Vanity Fair, 31 December 1870

Signed 'Ape' (Carlo Pellegrini), this chromolithograph plate—No. 113 in the Vanity Fair series—depicts a clergyman in full liturgical dress: black cassock, white surplice, and a dark purple cape with red trim. His hands are folded at his chest, eyes cast downward in exaggerated piety. The caption reads, 'He makes religion a tragedy, and the movements of his muscles a solemn ceremony.' The joke is entirely behavioral rather than ethnic: Pellegrini lampoons High Church solemnity and performative devotion, a live controversy in 1870 Anglican England where Anglo-Catholic ritual was drawing accusations of crypto-Popery. The figure's lugubrious expression and rigid posture do the satirical work, mocking clerical self-importance with economic, precisely observed line.