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Engraving by an anonymous artist satirizing the Dutch financial crash of 1720 caused by the South Sea and Mississippi Bubbles, from printer Isaak Stokmans' Het groote tafereel der dwaasheid (The Great Mirror of Folly) accompanied by verse.
A sphinx leaps from the top of a cave toward the busy scene below, the city of Vianen in the background, guarded by soldiers and a fence. A free city until 1795, Vianen became known as a refuge for debtors, its reputation bringing forth the Dutch euphemism "Naar Vianen gaan" (literally "to go to Vianen") for "to go bankrupt".
In the foreground, a man is slumped over a barrel, retching up papers with the names of the Dutch cities Utrecht, Weesp, and Enkhuizen, "Op hoop ("In hope"), and "Kladpapier" ("Blotting-paper"). Behind him is a man holding a sheet with "2 per cent, ik ben bedrogen" ("2 percent, I was cheated"). Inside the barrel is a French rooster, a nod to the Scottish-French financier John Law who set up the Banque Générale Privée and directed the Mississippi Company. Two men look up at the share-cat ("Actie-katjen" in the verse below) in a tree, as a man drowns, unnoticed, in the river. A man is picking up papers from the vomited pile and handing them to a boy (holding "Of ik been Gek vond" or "I have found a fool"). Behind them are another two men handling the papers, the one at the right with "Kan ze u dinen, to't kwart geef ik ze" ("(If it will serve you, I will give it to you for one-fourth") in hand, and the man at left, a crowd forming behind him, with "de Zuid Zoo", or "The South Sea", in one hand referencing the South Sea Company and raising his other to a caricature of a Jewish usurer. The crowd inspects more papers, "Vrak" ("Wreck"), "Was ik ze maar kwyt" ("f only I were rid of them"), and being ripped, "Weg die prullen" ("Away with the rubbish"). "Goet om te brande" ("Good to be burned") is in the smoke of a fire, in front of which is a youth undressing and holding "Hier zyn ze het best toe" ("They, the shares, are fittest for this") behind his back. A man floats over the scene, ballooned bladders attached to his waist, carried by the wind, an allusion to the windhandel or windnegotie (wind trade or wind commerce), terms used for the high-risk speculative trade.
![Mechlinia [Mechelen]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/80595.jpg)
