De geldzuchtige wereld (The Money-Hungry World)

This densely populated engraving depicts a chaotic marketplace where figures of all social ranks—merchants, clergy, nobles, peasants, and children—jostle together in frantic pursuit of wealth and pleasure. The composition swarms with activity: money changes hands, food and drink flow freely, while a giant figure dominates the center, its belly bursting with coins and treasures. Printed text flows around the margins in Dutch verse.

The work exemplifies the Northern European moralizing print tradition that preceded modern comics. Like later Hogarth and Gillray satires, it uses dense narrative detail and exaggerated characters to criticize human vice—here, universal greed across all classes. The engraved medium allowed artists to pack complex social observation into single images that functioned as both entertainment and social commentary, establishing visual storytelling conventions that would evolve into the sequential narrative of comic strips and books.