De Inventeur der Wind Negotie, op zyn Zegekar

This Dutch engraving ridicules John Law's financial scheme, the Mississippi Company bubble. Law rides triumphantly in a chariot while figures around him—labeled with names of cities and investors—blow wind into sails attached to his carriage, a literal depiction of inflated value backed by nothing. The print exemplifies early 18th-century political satire's direct fusion of text and image: Dutch verses flank the central engraving, explaining the scheme's fraudulence to readers. Such sheets descend from Bruegel and anticipate Gillray's satirical prints. The genre established visual mockery as a democratic tool, later inherited by 19th-century caricaturists and eventually comic strips, where exaggeration and allegory exposed greed, corruption, and public credulity through sharp observation and crude humor.