Eight beggars or ruined investors lamenting their losses in the Dutch financial crisis of 1720. Engraving, 1720, after P. Quast.

  • Quast, Pieter Jansz., 1606-1647.
Date:
[1720?]
Reference:
816094i
Part of:
Groote tafereel der dwaasheid.
  • Pictures

About this work

Description

The following is based on the British Museum catalogue. An investor, wearing sixteenth-century dress and a flask at his feet, is bullied and mocked by grotesque figures: a man with a lantern suspended from his cod-piece, an old peasant woman, a disabled beggar, and four country men, one with a long nose, another threatening him with a pitchfork. The inscription at the investor's feet begins, "Na dat ik alles heb verloren, Moet ik het bitter schempen horen Van dit Canaille, dat ontzind, Hun blijdschap in mijn droefheid vind..." (After I have lost everything I have to listen to abuse from this rabble which finds pleasure in my sorrow). On the ground in front of the central figure is a urine flask, suggesting (with his costume) that in Quast's original print this man was a quack doctor

Publication/Creation

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

Physical description

1 print : engraving ; platemark 30.2 x 38.3 cm

Lettering

De actie wereld op haar einde Translation of lettering: "The share-world at its end". Below the image, Dutch verses engraved in six columns. Many other engraved inscriptions in Dutch

Creator/production credits

The figures seem to be derived from prints and/or drawings by Pieter Jansz. Quast

References note

Frederik Muller, De nederlandsche geschiedenis in platen. Beredeneerde beschrijving van nederlandsche historieplaten, zinneprenten en historische kaarten, Amsterdam 1863, part 2, no. 3602 (67)
British Museum, Catalogue of political and personal satires, vol. 2, London 1978, no. 1687
Arthur H. Cole, The great mirror of folly (Het groote tafereel der dwaasheid). An economic-bibliographical study, Boston 1949, no. 67

Reference

Wellcome Collection 816094i

Notes

'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.

Languages

Where to find it

  • LocationStatusAccess
    Closed stores

Permanent link