Popular Culture
Ah! Monsignor!
Not uncommonly, revolutionary prints invoked excretory humor directed toward those priests who would not swear allegiance to the Revolution. Revolutionaries eliminated on their enemies; the latter might also receive enemas.
Active Citizen/ Passive Citizen
This cartoon mocks the distinction between active and passive citizens. Many revolutionaries hated this difference, essentially dividing those with property from those without. The propertied (active) were the only ones who could participate in the political process.
A Positive View?
This composition of the scene, in which a helpless Louis seems to be looking upward to heaven with his confessor, communicates humility. The executioners are relatively passive, leaving the King and confessor center stage.
A French Gentleman of The Court of Louis XVI
A sarcastic treatment from England of French manners that contrasts the weakness of the old regime with revolutionary arrogance. The engraver also seems to be pointing toward two entirely different views of masculinity.
A Democrat, or Reason and Philosophy
This cartoon by the popular British caricaturist James Gillray depicts the British politician Charles James Fox as a sans–culotte. Wearing a cockade in his wig and a bandage on his forehead, the unshaven Fox raises his bloody left hand as he lifts his left leg to break wind.
"This is My Dear Son": Napoleon as Child of the Devil
Linking Napoleon with Hell represents a far cry from his own propaganda. German propaganda piece depicting Napoleon as the child of the Devil.
"The Song of the End": The Whole World Now Chases Him
Where Napoleon was once the conqueror, the world now avenges itself. This sense of reversal, felt widely outside of France, characterized a number of the caricatures of Napoleon, and indeed of the entire Revolution.
The Great Man
German cartoonists tried to reduce Napoleon down to size, in this case, the size of mice! Here the mice serve as courtiers.
Chinese Children at the Tjap Go Meh Festival in Makassar
This photograph, dated 1880, shows Chinese children in a procession in the Tjap Go Meh Festival in Makassar, the largest city on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Tjap Go Meh is a Chinese festival that takes place 15 days after the Chinese New Year and marks the beginning of spring.
Krishna and the Cremation of Putana
Krishna is known in the stories of the Bhagavata-Purana as the 8th incarnation of the god Vishnu, destined to perform great deeds and remove the evils of the world.