C. de Fornaro's Caricature of Philip Armour

Carlo de Fornaro's satirical drawing depicts the Chicago meatpacking magnate Philip Armour as a grotesquely obese figure in formal dress, his exaggerated physique rendered in stark black silhouette against the page. Above floats a coat of arms featuring his industrial symbols: hanging cured meats, a candle, and a pig. The caricature employs the ethnic exaggeration common to late-19th-century editorial cartooning, where physical deformity signaled moral or financial excess. De Fornaro used such imagery to critique American industrial wealth and the robber barons who accumulated it. This drawing exemplifies how newspaper artists shaped public opinion through grotesque portraiture, a visual language that would influence early comic strips' character design and satirical approach to contemporary figures.