A Masonic Anecdote (Anecdote Maconique), satirical etching by James Gillray
period print · 1786
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SUMMARY
James Gillray's 1786 satirical etching connected with Cagliostro, held by the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG D13056); the Wikimedia Commons record states the image was gathered from the National Portrait Gallery, London website. The Commons record lists the work as public domain (the original 1786 engraving is long out of copyright; Commons notes a museum photograph-rights claim, which does not affect the public-domain status of an eighteenth-century print). License posture (public domain), creator (Gillray), and date (1786) copied from the Commons file record on 2026-06-03; the Commons record states the image was gathered from the holding institution's website, the National Portrait Gallery, London (reference NPG D13056). A vision pass on 2026-06-03 confirmed the print is a crowded masonic banquet scene (a standing speaker addressing a long table of caricatured diners beneath a radiant sun and masonic emblems), with two columns of engraved verse and a bilingual French and English title 'Anecdote Maconique / A Masonic Anecdote'; the caption therefore describes the scene rather than asserting which figure is Cagliostro.
NOTES
Gillray’s 1786 A Masonic Anecdote is the period artifact for the case: a satirical banquet scene that places Cagliostro’s Egyptian Freemasonry within the London print culture that both publicized and ridiculed him. It is used as the visual lead. The Commons record lists the work as public domain; the museum’s photograph-rights notice does not change the public-domain status of the underlying eighteenth-century engraving.