Collection:
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Catena-Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive
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Image No.:
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200105
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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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[Epitaphs found in the ruins]
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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; Ruins; Altars; Vases; Tombstones; Inscriptions; Death -- Symbolic aspects; Time --Mythology; Antiquarianism; Fragments
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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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"Here again I found part of a fine picture in bright mosaic, in which I could see a lady prostrated on a burning pyre and cruelly slaying herself, with nothing visible around her but some women's feet in shoes and some broken parts with a few draperies. All the rest had been destroyed by insatiable and greedy time, by antiquity, by winds, rains, and burning sun. The altar in this place was broken; the largest piece was the one with this inscription, which I discovered face downwards when I returned to it. Nearby I found an antique vase lying on the ground, made of alabaster stone, a pace and a half in height, with one of its handles missing and its body partly broken up to the mouth and partly whole."
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Rights Type:
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fair use
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