Den Cardinaal van Furstenberg, ontwaakt uyt den Droom

This Dutch engraving mocks Cardinal Wilhelm von Fürstenberg through allegorical theater. A cardinal awakens from a dream populated by demons, courtiers, and ecclesiastical figures—a visual sermon on his political treachery. The print descends from Renaissance emblem tradition and prefigures the satiric engravings of Hogarth and Gillray. Multiple figures gesture, point, and perform around a brick dwelling, while landscape unfolds in the distance. Dutch verse satirizes the cardinal's schemes and moral bankruptcy. Such prints circulated as cheap broadsides, combining moral instruction with political attack—the direct ancestor of comic strips' narrative-image fusion. They relied on viewers' knowledge of contemporary scandal, embedding topical controversy in biblical and classical allusion.