Hebzucht probeert Fortuna in te halen (Greed Attempts to Overtake Fortune)

This Dutch engraving satirizes human greed through a crowded, chaotic scene where figures scramble and scheme beneath an allegorical figure of Fortune. The composition derives from Northern Renaissance tradition—dense with narrative detail, moral instruction embedded in Latin verse below, and symbolic characters representing abstract vices. The printmaking technique, fine-line engraving, allowed precise social observation: merchants, clergy, peasants, and fools jostle together in their pursuit of wealth and favor. This print exemplifies the political and social satire that flourished in the Dutch Golden Age, establishing visual conventions—crowded composition, moralizing captions, type-characters—that would flow through Hogarth, Gillray, and eventually into sequential narrative and comics. Fortune's blindness and instability comment on the era's economic anxieties and human folly.