Detail View: Catena-Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive: Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile
|
Collection:
|
Catena-Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive
|
|
Image No.:
|
200115
|
|
Title:
|
Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile
|
|
View:
|
[The second garden enclosure on the island]
|
|
Dates:
|
1561
|
|
Location:
|
Europe--France--Ile-de-France--Paris
|
|
Location Type:
|
Creation
|
|
Culture:
|
French
|
|
Period:
|
Renaissance
|
|
Creator:
|
author
Colonna, Francesco
Attributed
1433/34-1527
Italian
|
|
Materials:
|
paper
|
|
Techniques:
|
woodcut (process)
|
|
Measurements:
|
33.8 x 22.2 cm
|
|
Repository:
|
New York, NY, USA, Private Collection, New York
|
|
Category:
|
Villas
|
|
Work Type:
|
Books
|
|
Subjects:
|
Romances; Pleasure gardens; Dreams; Parterres; Giardini segreti; Topiary; Knot gardens
|
|
Work Notes:
|
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.
|
|
Image Notes:
|
"The loops of the first bank opened out inside the second square to make a circle that filled it. Next came another square, the same distance from the second as that was from the first, and this also made loops at its corners near the angles of the second band, on the diagonal line, interlacing as they turned over and under each other. Inside this last square there was a lozenge shape, whose corners made tight loops knotted around the middle of the sides of the last square."
|
|
Rights Type:
|
fair use
|