Der Tulpenwahn

Gerome painted this in 1882, and though it is dressed as a scene from the 1630s, it was aimed squarely at his own moment. It shows the tulip mania that gripped the Dutch Republic, when single rare bulbs traded for the price of a house and then the market collapsed almost overnight. In the painting soldiers march through the flowerbeds, trampling the blooms on order to cut the supply and steady the price, while a nobleman stands over one prized flower with his sword drawn to defend it. Gerome finished the canvas the same year the Paris stock exchange crashed and ruined thousands of French speculators, a parallel his audience would not have missed.