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.
WorkNotes
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.
Work Notes
Image Notes:
"This sacred temple was built by the architectonic art in the form of a rotunda, carefully inscribed within a square figure on the flat ground, so that the diameter was the same length as the height of the square; and within this circle on the ground was drawn another square. The space between one of its sides and the circumference, following the diametral line, was divided into five parts, and a sixth part was added toward the center. After drawing another circular figure through this point, the learned architect had raised the principal part of this extraordinary structure, this superb edifice, with all its modules, dimensions, ambitus, contents, the thickness of its walls and of the outer columns, between one circle and the other; that is, between the principal wall and the colonnade or peristyle surrounding the open roofed space."
ReproNotes
"This sacred temple was built by the architectonic art in the form of a rotunda, carefully inscribed within a square figure on the flat ground, so that the diameter was the same length as the height of the square; and within this circle on the ground was drawn another square. The space between one of its sides and the circumference, following the diametral line, was divided into five parts, and a sixth part was added toward the center. After drawing another circular figure through this point, the learned architect had raised the principal part of this extraordinary structure, this superb edifice, with all its modules, dimensions, ambitus, contents, the thickness of its walls and of the outer columns, between one circle and the other; that is, between the principal wall and the colonnade or peristyle surrounding the open roofed space."
Image Notes
Rights Type:
fair use
ReproRightsDetails
fair use
Rights Type
Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile
