Detail View: Catena-Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive: Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile
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Collection:
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Catena-Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive
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Image No.:
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200108
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Title:
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Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile
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View:
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[Topiary in the shape of a giant]
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Dates:
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1561
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Location:
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Europe--France--Ile-de-France--Paris
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Location Type:
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Creation
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Culture:
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French
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Period:
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Renaissance
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Creator:
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author
Colonna, Francesco
Attributed
1433/34-1527
Italian
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Materials:
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paper
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Techniques:
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woodcut (process)
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Measurements:
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33.8 x 22.2 cm
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Repository:
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New York, NY, USA, Private Collection, New York
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Category:
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Villas
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Work Type:
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Books
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Subjects:
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Romances; Pleasure gardens; Dreams; Kythera Island (Greece); Topiary; Giants; Green Man; Colossi; Garden sculpture
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Work Notes:
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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.
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Image Notes:
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"...they spread out their silken garments neatly on the stone seats that served as dressing-room, tied up their blond hair beautifully in hairnets woven and knotted from gold thread, and unconcernedly let their shapely and delicate bodies be seen entirely naked in every particular, while keeping their virtue: flesh that was peerlessly delicate, mingling roses with seasonable snow. Alas, how my heart was agitated, opening itself up to be filled brimfull with voluptuous joy! I thought myself happy merely to behold such delights, for I certainly could not prevent the ardent fires from leaping up to assault me in my furnace of a heart..."
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Rights Type:
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fair use
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