- Museum number
- 1868,0808.9602
- Title
-
Object: Graf kelder der Verongelukte Actionisten
-
Object: Eere-Titel, of Gordyn voor het Schouburg aller Actie-Tafereelen...
-
Series: Het Groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid
- Description
-
Dutch satire on the financial crisis of 1720 with a decorative border surrounding an etching on a separate plate. In the centre is the figure of Time holding a mirror in front of a young man who points at a globe representing international speculations. The border consists of strap-work with two Callot figures, one fishing with a net for gold-coins, the other holding a spade who has abandoned his useful work in canals and harbours.At the top is a calf's head and the head of a Jesuit blowing hard but only doiing "monks's work" (i.e., useless work), cranes on either side devour a frog and a snake, swallows fly away at the corners; a bird cage hangs at the top of each side, one with a bird, the other empty but bearing a laurel branch representing John Law; on the left is a pair of spectacles, a cheese, a bunch of herrings and a drum, on the right a horn, a tobacco roll, three pipes, and a bunch of withered carrots; below is a half-barrel of crayfish.
Engraved title and inscriptions, letterpress title, verses and a list of the schemes in five columns.
- Production date
- 1720
- Dimensions
-
Height: 299 millimetres (frame)
-
Height: 140 millimetres (inner plate)
-
Height: 403 millimetres (printed area)
-
Width: 187 millimetres
-
Width: 254 millimetres
-
Width: 87 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- This is the first print in two volumes with identical gold tooled covers constituting 'Het Groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid'. A scan of the binding is attached to this record.
The two volumes contain a collection of satires relating to the financial bubble of 1720. Most of the contents are engravings and woodcuts, usually in the form of broadsides, but there are also portraits of participants, letterpress publications with poems and plays, and manuscript texts. The title is only given on the label on the spine.
The volumes are contemporary assemblages of material relating to the bubble, clearly put together by a contemporary bookseller for his clients very soon after the bubble had collapsed, using material published during the unfolding of the crisis. Other copies are known (including BL 789.g.3), each of which (unsurprisingly) differs in its contents. Some of the prints are re-issues of much earlier satires (eg on the 1637 tulip mania), recycled to suit the new situation.
For the series see:
Arthur C.Cole, 'The Great Mirror of Folly, an economic-bibliographical study', Boston 1949
Frans de Bruyn, in 'Eighteenth-Century Life', XXIV 2000, pp.62-87
Kuniko Forrer, in 'De Boekenwereld', XIV 1998, pp.106-24
Anne Goldgar, 'Tulipmania', Chicago 2007, pp.306-313
W.N.Goetzmann and others (eds), 'The Great Mirror of Folly; finance, culture and the crash of 1720', Yale 2013 (major monograph, but not a catalogue: see review PQ 2015,pp.53-6)
For another impression of a similar broadside, with same engraving but different letterpress, and for futher notes, see 1858,0213.86.6 (formerly part of another series of printed matter relating to the financial bubble, for the group record of which see 1858,0213.86.50-73).
- Location
- Not on display
- Associated events
- Associated Event: Financial Bubbles 1720
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.9602
