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

Catena-Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive

200087

Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile

[Logistica and Thelemia accompany Poliphilo to a garden with a mysterious triangular stone]

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; Garden sculpture; Orchards; Arbors; Vines; Obelisks; Topiary; Niches

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.

"Then, with her noble companion, she led me into another garden near the former one, where I saw an areostyle arcade all made from bricks, five paces high from the ground to the top of the arch and three in breadth, and all tiled so that the rain ran to the outside. It was a continuous circle, beautifully covered and over grown with green ivy so that not the slightest vestige of wall was visible, and there were a hundred arches, enclosing a flowering orchard. In each of the arches there was a red porphyry pedestal of the best lineaments, on which stood a golden statue of a divine-looking nymph, all varying in their garments, head ornaments and actions, and each making a reverent gesture toward the centre of the garden."

fair use