During Tulip mania (Dutch: tulpenmanie) contract prices for some bulbs reached extraordinarily high levels, and then dramatically collapsed in 1637. It is generally considered to have been the first recorded speculative bubble in history.

Brueghel’s great painting ‘Allegory on Tulipmania’ has monkeys with tulips and moneybags. Breughel is ridiculing the Tulipmania by depicting the speculators as foolish monkeys.