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

Catena-Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive

200075

Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile

[The fountain of the sleeping nymph]

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; Nymphs; Streams; Spring (allegorical figure); Satyrs (Greek mythology)

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.

"She held her lips slightly open so as to breathe, and the opening was carved and drilled out so that one could almost see her throat. Her loose tresses flowed over the cloth, with the finest hairs following the grooved or folded surface of the rumpled material. Her thighs were suitably fleshy, her plump knees slightly bent, showing her narrow feet which tempted one to reach out one's hand to stroke and tickle them; and the rest of her lovely body was enough to provoke even one made of stone, like herself. Behind her head was an arbutus tree with its evergreen foliage and many soft, round fruits, full of birds which seemed to be twittering and inducing the nymph's sweet slumber. At her feet there stood a satyr, all aroused in purient lust..."

fair use