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Abbildung des auf der Strasse Quincampoix in Paris entstandenen so berühmten Actien-Handel. Excudit C. Weigel nach den Parisischen Original...

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This engraving is a German version of ‘Rue Quinquempoix en l'Année 1720’(BM Catalogue 1655). It gives a view, in angular perspective, of the Rue Quinquempoix, Paris, with crowds of persons assembled there during the share mania of the Mississippi, South Sea, and other schemes which bubbled in the financial atmosphere created by John Law of Lauriston.

The title is engraved with a long German inscription divided into two parts by a medallion bust portrait in nearly full view, below inscribed I Law. To one side of the pedestal of this portrait a man appears to be chained, weeping bitterly; on the other side another man lies extended on the ground, in the act of stabbing himself with a dagger; a young woman sits near him in great distress. Above the medallion is a Janus head, the facial expressions of which are respectively happy and sad; a hand on the side of the former holds a cornucopia which is filled with jewels; another hand, on the side of the latter face, empties a cornucopia which contains bank notes marked ‘800,000’, and ‘100, 000’, &c.

The French version of this print is no. 31 in vol I. of ‘Het Groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid’, a collection of Dutch satires on the schemes of Law and his contemporaries, also published in 1720.

BM Catalogue 1656.

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