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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200089
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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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[Poliphilo comes to a pergola and meets an elegant nymph]
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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; Love; Pergolas; Berceaux; Female figures; Nymphs
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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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"I was beside myself and in a kind of rapture as I raised my eyes a little, and saw before me an artificial pregola of flowering jasmine, its high arch decked all over with fragrant flowers, with the three colours mingled together. I went into it, gravely worried by the unexpected disappearance and thinking over the various stupendous things that had happened. Above all, I held on firmly to the high hopes confirmed by the royal and fateful promise: that I would find my golden-haired Polia. 'Alas, Polia!' I sighed to myself, and the amorous sighs engendered inside my inflamed echoed beneath the green bower..."
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Rights Type:
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fair use
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