Tulip mania was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels. The major acceleration st
A Satire of Tulip Mania by Jan Brueghel the Younger (c. 1640) depicts speculators as brainless monkeys in contemporary upper-class dress. In a commentary on the economic folly, one monkey urinates on the previously valuable plants, others appear in debtor's court and one is carried to the grave.
Semper Augustus (17th century) anonymous watercolour in the Tulip book of the Six Collection, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The Semper Augustus is famous for being the most expensive tulip sold during the tulip mania. The note states that the specimen was sold for ƒ3000 (~€38.000 in 2024).
Admirael van der Eijck from the 1637 catalogue by Pieter Cos, sold for ƒ1045 on February 5, 1637
Wagon of Fools by Hendrik Gerritsz Pot, 1637. Haarlem weavers chase a wind-borne wagon flying a fool's cap flag. Flora, goddess of flowers, rides aboard to destruction in the sea with the vices Fraud, Gluttony and Avarice, Mrs. Mania, and Idle Hope/Fortuna.
Charles de l'Écluse, L'Escluse, or Carolus Clusius, seigneur de Watènes, was an Artois doctor and pioneering botanist, perhaps the most influential of all 16th-century scientific horticulturists.
Carolus Clusius 1585