Jonathan Bass, Living Ossified Man

This woodcut advertisement presents Jonathan Bass, billed as a 'Living Ossified Man'—a human curiosity from the dime museum and sideshow era. The stark, high-contrast image uses bold linear borders and careful anatomical rendering typical of newspaper promotional cuts. Bass stands frontally, dressed in period clothing, with the framing device emphasizing his status as a spectacle to be examined. Such advertisements populated newspapers and broadsheets, employing the visual conventions of wood engraving to advertise attractions that drew crowds to traveling shows and permanent museums. The graphic language—direct presentation, contained frame, labeled subject—would influence the formal vocabulary of early comic strips and sequential art emerging in the same period.