Hudibras Vanquished by Trulla, plate five from Hudibras

Hudibras Vanquished by Trulla, plate five from Hudibras, is a satirical print executed by William Hogarth English, 1697-1764, between 1725 and 1726. This key work from his early career utilizes the combined media of etching and engraving, techniques applied in black ink onto cream paper. The sheet is edge mounted onto cream wove paper, reflecting standard archival practice for 18th-century prints.

The artwork illustrates a scene from Samuel Butler’s famous long-form satirical poem, Hudibras (1663-1678), which bitterly mocked Puritan figures and religious extremism following the English Civil War. Hogarth translated Butler’s complex narrative, full of burlesque humor and low-life characterization, into a clear visual commentary. In this specific plate, the anti-hero, Sir Hudibras, meets a humiliating defeat at the hands of Trulla, a rough camp follower whose physical prowess far surpasses the cowardly knight’s. Hogarth emphasizes the scene's chaos and indignity through crowded composition and exaggerated facial expressions, defining his signature style of graphic satire.

As a printmaker, Hogarth was essential to the development of commercial print culture in England, establishing narrative series that could be widely distributed to the middle class. The precision required for etching and engraving allowed him to render the detailed setting and the specific actions crucial to the poem’s plot. This work, classified simply as a print, remains an important example of 18th-century English illustration and is preserved in the extensive permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Given its age and cultural importance, high-resolution images of this piece are often accessible within public domain art repositories for scholarly study.