Detail View: Catena-Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive: Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile

Catena-Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive

200084

Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile

[A wonderful fountain centerpiece at the queen's feast]

1561

Europe--France--Ile-de-France--Paris

Creation

French

Renaissance

author Colonna, Francesco Attributed 1433/34-1527 Italian

paper

woodcut (process)

33.8 x 22.2 cm

New York, NY, USA, Private Collection, New York

Villas

Books

Romances; Pleasure gardens; Dreams; Banquets; Tree of Life; Scrolling foliage; Fountains; Fruit trees; Harpies; Centerpieces (furnishings); Wheels

Collation: a6 A-Bb6 Cc8 = 164 ff., complete. With engraved woodcut title-page and 181 woodcuts illustrating the text, of which 13 are full-page, several crible initials in preliminary text, large 9-line floriated arabesque initials forming an acrostic throughout, Kerver's unicorn device (Renouard 515) on verso of final leaf. Folio, 338 x 222 mm, bound in nineteenth-century calf, marbled endpapers. A superb French Edition of the most famous illustrated book of the Renaissance. A large number of these magnificent illustrations are dedicated to gardens. The designer of the original 1499 Aldus woodcuts remains unidentified although speculation has included artists such as Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini. Nor has the author of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili been identified with certainty. It was probably written by Francesco Colonna, a Dominican from Treviso, in Latin about 1445. Its two main themes are the allegorical dream-journey of Poliphilus in search of his love Polia, and the praise of Antique art and culture.

"From the mouth of this vase there arouse a precious mound, marvellously compounded of innumerable globular gems heaped closely on top of each other and irregularly or roughly fashioned. They made the mound look delightfully rocky, with its different colours brilliantly flashing and its well-proportioned height. On the top or peak of this mound there grew a pomegranate bush whose trunk or stem and branches were, like this whole assemblage, of shining gold. The leaves attached to it were of scintillating emerald; the fruits distributed over it of natural size. The golden pomegranates were split wide open, and in place of the seeds there were bright rubies glowing beyond compare, and as large as beans. Then the ingenious artisan of this inestimable work, out of his fertile imagination, had separated the seeds with a membrane made from thin silver leaf...."

fair use