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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200090
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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 falls in love with the 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; Torches (lighting devices); Light
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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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"This beautiful and heavenly nymph hurried toward me and approached with joyous haste, revealing her rare beauties to my eyes, while I remained seized and dumbstruck as I gazed at the revelation at close quarters.
As soon as her amorous appearance and graceful presence had descended, by means of my eyes, to my inmost parts, their advent awoke my memory and aroused my heart. They offered and presented to it the cause of all its trouble: that which had filled it full as a quiver with piercing arrows, and made it into the house and home of her sweet image..."
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Rights Type:
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fair use
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