Flora’s wagon of fools

1637

In the 1630s the cultivation and trade in tulip bulbs incited tulip mania. Speculation drove prices sky-high. In 1637 the bubble suddenly burst, leaving some bankrupt. Flora, the goddess of flowers is seated on the wagon of fools with a number of men and women symbolising human vices. Fool’s caps can be seen everywhere. The crowd, out to make an easy profit, rush alongside the land yacht into the sea, to their destruction. Every modern crisis on the stock market revives the memory of the tulip mania back in those days.