Art. 111 of the Higher Education Act

This Dutch wood engraving satirizes Article 111 of legislation governing university instruction, depicting professorial pomposity meeting student resistance. A robed academic gestures grandly while holding a skull—a classical vanitas symbol—as students seated around a table exchange skeptical glances and gestures of dismissal. The composition recalls Hogarth's narrative prints and German Bilderbogen picture-sheets in its crowded scene of social conflict rendered through expressive line work. The print descends from a long tradition of political and institutional satire using caricature to lampoon authority: the exaggerated poses and facial expressions transform a legislative debate into visual comedy. Such broadsides were precursors to modern editorial cartooning and the sequential narrative techniques of early comics, using grotesque distortion and group dynamics to critique power structures.