Kermis Wind-Kraamer en Grossier (The Wind Merchant at the Fair)

This Dutch engraving satirizes the South Sea Bubble and stock speculation mania of 1720. A charlatan merchant and his accomplice peddle worthless shares—literally held aloft by wind and cherubs—to credulous buyers. The trunk overflows with fraudulent papers; victims' complaints fill the margins in period Dutch. The print descends from Northern Renaissance broadsheet satire and Bruegel's tradition of moral folly, anticipating Hogarth's narrative engravings. Its combination of dense verbal annotation, grotesque caricature, and economic critique became standard in 18th-century print satire. The work mocks both the speculators' greed and the crowd's gullibility, reflecting popular anxiety over new financial instruments and their catastrophic collapse.