De Inbeelding schildert de Mississippi

This engraving satirizes the Mississippi Company financial bubble through allegorical figures and classical imagery. A woman (representing the scheme) sits enthroned while cherubs and attendants gather around her, surrounded by symbols of wealth and commerce. The composition draws on the Baroque emblem tradition, using elaborate visual metaphor to mock speculative investment fever. The print descends from Northern European satirical engraving, a lineage running through Hogarth and into modern comics. Like later caricaturists, the artist deploys exaggeration and symbolic excess to expose fraud. Detailed inscriptions in Dutch below carry the narrative, establishing the form—image plus explanatory text—that would structure political comics for centuries. This work exemplifies how printmaking became the primary medium for public satire before photography and mass reproduction.