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

Catena-Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive

200100

Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile

[Polia and Poliphilo engage in a ritual whereby the priestess invokes a rosebush]

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; Rituals (events); Women priests; Roses; Burning bush; Venus (Roman deity); Love; Birds; Shrubs; Altars

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.

"Scarcely had I opened my frightened eyes a little to look at the altar, than I saw a verdant rose-bush miraculously issue out of the pure smoke, grow and multiply. Its many branches filled a great part of the sanctuary, reaching to the ceiling and bearing a host of vermilion and red roses, together with somewhat rounded fruits of marvellous fragrance that were white tinted with red. They tempted the taste to an even greater degree than those which approached the famished mouth of Tantalus, and were more beautiful than those desired by Eurystheus."

fair use