Cambio di Milan (The Money Exchange of Milan)

This etching depicts two caricatured figures conducting financial transactions at a money-changer's booth during the War of Spanish Succession. The left figure, wearing a tall hat and holding a key, represents deception; the right, hunched and grasping, embodies avarice. Labels reading "Settlement," "Codcil," and "Admissive" reference legal instruments of fraud. This work belongs to the Northern European tradition of political satire—predecessors to Hogarth and Gillray—using grotesque caricature to mock corruption and financial manipulation during wartime. The engraving's sharp lines and dense hatching convey moral judgment through formal technique, establishing visual conventions later adopted by printed comics.