The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in 17th Century France

Abstract

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is one of those books which have suffered from being too well printed and too beautifully illustrated. For the last century a hundred students must have turned to it for its woodcuts for every one that cast eye on the text ; and even those who look at the latter usually do so only to see the quality of the typography and not to read what the author says. And yet the book is one of the most curious products of the Venetian Renaissance, and one of the most revealing documents in the study of men's state of mind in the late fifteenth century. It was first published in Venice by Aldus Manutius in 1499. The author did not put his name to it, but he was almost certainly a Dominican monk of the monastery of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, called Francesco Colonna.1 The book is in form a romance of the traditional medieval type, like the Roman de la Rose, but based more directly on the Amorosa Visione of Boccaccio.2 It tells in a dream of the wanderings of the lover Poliphilus, but the main love theme is wrapped up in allegory and interspersed with long passages in wfiich are described the various buildings which the hero meets on his way. These form a prominent part of the book, and one of the main subjects of the woodcut illustrations. From the present point of view the most important aspect of the book is the romantic attitude which it shows towards antiquity. It is filled with references to the antique in every form. Ancient rites are described ; the names of the characters are bastard Greek, and the actual language is a barbarous mixture of Italian, Latin, and Greek; the buildings are all in the classical style, covered with inscriptions of which the author gives lengthy analyses and translations. The author was evidently intent on re-creating something of the atmosphere of antiquity, but his attitude towards the subject is peculiar. He has none of the archaological passion of the early Quattrocento Florentines, and his reconstruction of antiquity differs from theirs in being far more deeply tinged with mediaeval Christian symbolism. When, for instance, he describes the ceremonies in the Temple of Venus, in which Poliphilus is finally united to his love, Polia, the pagan ritual is mixed with Christian elements, and those attending the ceremony even say " Cusi sia " at the end of each prayer.3 It is always Colonna's intention to secularize these Christian elements, but it is characteristic of his approach to antiquity