Vonnis van Apollo over de Bubbels (Apollo's Judgment on the Bubble)

This Dutch engraving satirizes the South Sea Bubble and similar financial speculation crazes that swept Europe in 1720. Apollo presides over a chaotic scene of merchants, soldiers, and common folk engaged in frantic trading, their fortunes literally built on soap bubbles. The print employs classical allegory—a convention inherited from Hogarth's predecessors—to mock greed and financial recklessness across all social classes. The detailed etching technique allowed printmakers to pack dense narrative and symbolic detail into single images, a tradition that would flow directly into 18th-century caricature and eventually the sequential panel storytelling of modern comics. Such prints circulated widely as popular commentary on current events, establishing the satirical print as a mass medium for social critique.