Bombario or the Dead, c. 1721

This Dutch engraving depicts a chaotic allegorical scene where Death (skeleton, center-right) leads away Bombario, likely a charlatan or quack doctor, amid a crowd of duped patients and onlookers in a columned hall. The print employs the satirical tradition of exposing medical fraud and public gullibility through crowded composition, grotesque figures, and explicit moral commentary in the text panels below. As part of the Northern European print-satire heritage stretching from Bruegel through Hogarth, this image combines narrative sequence, social critique, and ornamental detail. The allegorical skeleton, stock comedic types, and didactic Latin inscriptions typify early 18th-century moral caricature—visual journalism that would influence generations of comic printmaking and eventually the sequential art of modern comics.