A satire on the massacres of 2-6 sept. A cannibal feast with many revolting details takes place in a ramshackle room. Five persons sit at a round table on which is a head in a dish. The head of the family (left) is seated on a sack inscribed 'propriété de la nation', which disgorges a crown, sceptre, and mitre, with jewels, &c. His vis-à-vis (who wears a bag-wig) is seated on the body of a woman whose throat is cut; a blood-stained axe is thrust through his belt. All eagerly devour human fragments. An old hag is seated opposite a large fire in which plunder is burning; she bastes the body of an infant, transfixed on a spit. In the foreground (left) three small children, one wearing a dagger, crouch round a tub, eating the entrails which it contains. Heads and corpses appear through a door and in a rack slung to the ceiling. On the wall is rudely drawn figure of 'petion', wearing a cocked hat, holding out an axe in one hand, a head in the other, with the inscription 'vive la liberte vive le egalitè'. Near it is the headless figure of louis xvi as 'lewis le grand', in a pompous attitude. Plaster has peeled from the walls of the poverty-stricken room. Beneath the title is etched on a separate plate: 'epigram extempore on seeing the above print. "here as you see, and as 'tis known,
"frenchmen mere cannibals are grown;
"on maigre days each had his dish
"of soup, or sallad, eggs, or fish;
"but now 'tis human flesh they gnaw,
"and ev'ry day is mardi gras' 20 september 1792
hand-coloured etching. Date: 1792. Dimensions: Height: 250 mm; Width: 352 mm. Medium: paper. Depicted People: Louis XVI, King of France and Navarre, . Collection: British Museum. Petit souper, a la Parisienne; -or- a family of sans-culotts refreshing, after the fatigues of the day (BM 1868,0808.6230)
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