Law, Like Another Don Quixote, Sits on Sancho’s Ass, Being Everyone’s Fool
The Actious Atlas of Fashionable Paper, with its Accomplices and the Little Bowling Game
Anonymous
1720
Etching and engraving
Amid an apocalyptic landscape, several figures hold up globes in the manner of Atlas, the mythological Titan whose burden of keeping the world aloft served as a symbol of both economic power and precariousness. John Law appears in the center of the print aided by Hercules (signifying the French monarchy). Law is surrounded by a noblewoman, a servant (boasting that he will “buy my master’s carriage and horses”), a peasant, and a bearded Jewish man wearing rags—one of many anti-Semitic attacks against the purported financial dealings of Jewish people in The Great Mirror of Folly. Evoking the bubbles’ many players and dramatic reversals of fortune, the image also portends collapse in the form of a cheeky Cupid in the foreground, who prepares to hurl his bowling ball and knock them all down.
: Mirriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs
The New York Public Library believes that this item is in the public domain under the laws of the United States, but did not make a determination as to its copyright status under the copyright laws of other countries. This item may not be in the public domain under the laws of other countries.
