Inspirada en un grabado atribuido a George Bickham (1740) [1], esta estampa, atribuida a William Dent, fue publicada el 3 de junio de 1791 en Londres por James Aitken. La crítica liberal al crecimiento del Estado es evidente y la inscripción no deja lugar a dudas.

Inscripción:
PUBLIC CREDIT, OR, THE STATE IDOL.
And the ****[King] made unto himself a great IDOL, the likeness of which was not in Heaven above, nor in the Earth beneath, and he reared up his Head unto the Clouds, and extended his Arms over all the land, his Legs also were as the Posts of a gate, or as an Arch stretched forth over the Doors of the public Offices, and whosoever passed in beneath with idolatrous Reverence First lifted up their Eyes, and Kissed the cheeks of the Postern.

Además del precedente de G. Bickham, S. Pepys en su diario describe en 1659-60 una gran pintura, colgada en el edificio del Royal Exchange de Londres, "of a great pair of buttocks shooting of a turd into [Admiral] Lawson's mouth, and over it was wrote 'The thanks of the House'". Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Latham and Mathews, UCLA, 1983, vol. I, p. 45. Disponible: http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1660/02/07/

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[1] Idol Worship or the Way to Preferment, 1740. British Museum, Satires, nº 2447. Véase FOTO 2.

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REFERENCIAS:

DUPUY, Pascal (Ed.), Annales historiques de la Révolution française, Armand Colin, París, nº 361, (2010), fig. 65.
GEORGE, M. Dorothy, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum, Londres, vol. V, 1935, 7872.

En internet: http://discover.odai.yale.edu/ydc/Record/3626414/Description#tabnav
Artículo de Ian Haywood en Romantic Circles: http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/forgery/HTML/praxis.2011.haywood.html

Foto: http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/38/ed/6d/38ed6dd96a7171c5207f162c69fa476e.jpg