A chariot driven by Folly and pulled by speculative trading companies displays a figure of Fortune corrupting honest trade. Etching by B. Picart, ca. 1720.

The following is based on the British Museum online catalogue and on de Bruyn, loc. cit. A street scene in Amsterdam. In the right background, people trading shares in the English coffee house (nicknaamed Quinquenpoix after the Paris stock-exchange in the rue Quinquenpoix). From the coffee house a large crowd of people surround and push a cart with Fortuna, the cart pulled by six allegorical figures representing various investment schemes. In front of the cart are mushrooms representing the towns which invested in the schemes. Above, the devil blows soap bubbles over Fortuna. On the left is the destination of the cart: labelled gateways to three asylums of Amsterdam (the sickhouse, the madhouse and the poorhouse). Fame flies off to the left. Bottom centre, a Janus head showing two faces of investment. Among the crowd on the left is a man with a magic lantern

"The interior of the coffee house ... is realistically portrayed, right down to the two municipal edicts affixed to the doorposts"--De Bruyn, loc. cit.

[Amsterdam] : [publisher not identified], [1720?]

1 print : etching, with engraving ; platemark 27.8 x 37.2 cm

Monument consacré à la posterité en memoire de la folie incroyable de la XX. année du XVIII siecle Ter eeuwiger gedagtenisse der dwaasheid van het XX jaar der XVIII eeuw. Desinit in luctum species formosa superne. Hor. Art poet. B. Picart fecit 1720 Translation of lettering: "Monument erected for posterity in memory of the incredible madness of the 20th year of the 18th century". Below the image, engraved verses and prose commentary, in French on the left and Dutch on the right

State II.

'Het groote tafereel der dwaasheid', Amsterdam, 1720, is a collection of literary and pictorial satires relating to the Dutch speculation bubble of 1720, which occurred simultaneously with the South Sea bubble and the Mississippi bubble involving John Law. This print is one of the many in that collection: see A.H. Cole, op. cit.

Frederik Muller, De nederlandsche geschiedenis in platen. Beredeneerde beschrijving van nederlandsche historieplaten, zinneprenten en historische kaarten, Amsterdam 1863, part 2, no. 3553 (18)

British Museum, Catalogue of political and personal satires, vol. 2, London 1954, no. 1627

Arthur H. Cole, The great mirror of folly (Het groote tafereel der dwaasheid). An economic-bibliographical study, Boston 1949, no. 26

Frans De Bruyn, 'Reading Het groote tafereel der dwaasheid: an emblem book of the folly of speculation in the bubble year 1720', Eighteenth-century life, 2000, 24: 1-42, p. 16

Wellcome Collection 812283i