Media Information

 
 
 
Collection:
Catena-Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive
Image No.:
200103
Title:
Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile
View:
[Polia and Poliphilo look at ancient epitaphs in the ruined temple]
Dates:
1561
Location:
Europe--France--Ile- de-France--Paris
Location Type:
Creation
Culture:
French
Period:
Renaissance
Creator:
author
Colonna, Francesco
Attributed
1433/34-1527
Italian
Materials:
paper
Techniques:
woodcut (process)
Measurements:
33.8 x 22.2 cm
Repository:
New York, NY, USA, Private Collection, New York
Category:
Villas
Work Type:
Books
Subjects:
Romances; Pleasure gardens; Dreams; Love; Ruins; Temples; Obelisks; Symbols; Scales (weighing devices); Justice (virtue); Egyptians; Caesar, Julius, 100-44 BCE
Work Notes:
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.
Image Notes:
"I interpreted it thus:
LAWFUL JUSTICE, UNSHEATHED AND FREE FROM LOVE AND HATE, AND WELL-CONSIDERED LIBERALITY FIRMLY PRESERVE THE KINGDOM
Then beneath this in another rectangular figure I saw an eye, two ears of wheat tied crosswise, an antique scimitar, then two wheat-flails crossed over a circle and beribboned, a globe, and a rudder. Then there was an ancient vase, out of which sprang an olive-branch adorned with fruits. There followed a broad plate, two ibises, six coins in a circle, a chapel with an open door and an altar in the centre, and lastly two plumb-lines. I interpreted the figure in Latin as follows:
TO THE DIVINE AND EVER-AUGUST JULIUS CAESAR, GOVERNOR OF THE WHOLE WORLD, FOR THE CLEMENCY AND LIBERALITY OF HIS SOUL, THE EGYPTIANS HAVE ERECTED THIS FROM THEIR PULBIC FUNDS"
Rights Type:
fair use

Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile