page_title: Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hypnerotomachia Poliphili / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Venice: 1499, by Francesco Colonna. WKR 3.5.4, Houghton Library, Harvard University
context_page_description: Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, called in English Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream or The Dream of Poliphilus, is a romance said to be by Francesco Colonna. It is a famous example of an incunable. The work was first published in 1499 in Venice. This first edition has an elegant page layout, with refined woodcut illustrations in an Early Renaissance style. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili presents a mysterious arcane allegory in which the main protagonist, Poliphilo pursues his love, Polia, through a dreamlike landscape. In the end, he is reconciled with her by the "Fountain of Venus".
context_section_description: The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was printed by Aldus Manutius in Venice in December 1499. The author of the book is anonymous. However, an acrostic formed by the first, elaborately decorated letter in each chapter in the original Italian reads "POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCVS COLVMNA PERAMAVIT", which means "Brother Francesco Colonna has dearly loved Polia". Despite this clue, the book has also been attributed to Leon Battista Alberti, and earlier, to Lorenzo de Medici. Manutius himself claimed that the author was a different Francesco Colonna, a wealthy Roman governor. The identity of the illustrator is less certain than that of the author.
  The subject matter of the book lies within the tradition (or genre) of the Romance. It follows the conventions of courtly love, which in 1499 continued to provide engaging thematic matter for the Quattrocento aristocrats. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili also draws from Renaissance humanism where arcane writings are a demonstration of classical thought.
  The text of the book is written in a bizarre Latinate Italian. Without explanation, the text is full of words based on Latin and Greek roots. The book, however, also includes words from the Italian language and illustrations which include Arabic and Hebrew words. Moreover, Colonna would invent new forms of language when those available to him were inaccurate. The book also contains some uses of Egyptian hieroglyphs, but they are not authentic. Most of them have been drawn from a late antique text of dubious origin called Hieroglyphica.
  The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, set in 1467, consists of a series of precious and elaborate scenes involving the title character, Poliphilo ("friend of many things" from the Greek words polloi meaning "many" and philos meaning "friend"). In these scenes, Poliphilo wanders a bucolic-classical dreamland in search of his love, Polia ("many things"). The author's style is elaborately descriptive and unsparing in its use of superlatives. The text makes frequent references to classical geography and mythology, mostly by way of comparison.
  The book has long been sought after as one of the most beautiful incunabula ever printed. The typography is famous for its quality and clarity. Its roman typeface, cut by Francesco Griffo, is a revised version of a type which Aldus had first used in 1496 for the De Aetna of Pietro Bembo. The type is thought to be one of the first examples of the roman typeface, and in incunabula, it is unique to the Aldine Press. The type was revived by the Monotype Corporation in 1923 as "Poliphilus". In 1929, Stanley Morison directed another revival of the earlier version of Griffo's type. It was called "Bembo".
  The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is illustrated with 168 exquisite woodcuts showing the scenery, architectural settings, and some of the characters Poliphilo encounters in his dreams. They depict scenes from Poliphilo's adventures and the architectural features over which the author rhapsodizes, in a simultaneously stark and ornate line art style. This integrates perfectly with the type, an example of typographic art.
  The illustrations are interesting because they shed light on Renaissance man's taste in the æsthetic qualities of Greek and Roman antiquities. In the United States, a book on the life and works of Aldus Manutius by Helen Barolini was set within pages that reproduce all the illustrations and many of the full pages from the original work, reconstructing the original layout.
  The psychologist Carl Jung admired the book, believing the dream images presaged his theory of archetypes. The style of the woodcut illustrations had a great influence on late nineteenth century English illustrators, such as Aubrey Beardsley, Walter Crane, and Robert Anning Bell.
  In 1592, in a London edition, "R. D." (who is believed to be Robert Dallington) partially translated the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Here, it was given its best known English title, The Strife of Love in a Dream. In 1999, a first complete English translation by musicologist Joscelyn Godwin was published. However his translation uses standard
caption: Triumphal Car
exif: {}