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

Catena-Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive

200088

Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile

[Poliphilo chooses the third portal and the maiden Philtronia, Logistrica leaves in anger, and Poliphilo is left with victorious Thelemia]

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; Love; Portals; Paradise; Meadows; Trees; Female figures; Water

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.

"Logistica spoke these and similar words in vehement agitation, with angrily wrinkled brow, then threw her lyre to the ground and broke it. Thelemia, alert and unperturbed by this tirade, smiled and made a sign that I was not to listen to Logistica. The latter, as soon as she grasped my wicked intentions, was filled with contempt; she turned her back, sighed, and ran speedily out and away. I was left there with my dear, victorious Thelemia, who flattered me with cheerful words: 'This is the place, Poliphilo, where it will surely not be long before you find the thing you love most: the thing that is yours, the one thing in the world which your obstinate heart unceasingly thinks about and hopes for.'"

fair use