HYPNEROTOMACHIA POLIPHILI

The Strife of Love in A Dream

Lane WilkinsonLIS 7790 – Winter 2007

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

THE HYPNEROTOMACHIA OF POLIPHILO, IN

WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT ALL HUMANTHINGS ARE BUT A DREAM, ANDMANY OTHER THINGS WORTHY

OF KNOWLEDGE ANDMEMORY

* * **

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili An Italian ‘romanzo d’amore’

An established literary tradition idealized in the works of Boccaccio (1313 – 1375)

Characterized by pastoral tales of unrequited love, heroism, mythical beings, and ultimate disillusionment.

The Name From the Greek:

Υπνερωτομαχία Πολύφιλου The root words for the title are

Υπνως : hypnos : dream or sleep Ερωs : eros : love Μαχία : machia : struggle or

battle Πολύ : poly : many Φιλος : philos : love/loved

The Name In other words:

Poliphilo’s struggle for love in a dream

Note, however, that ‘Poliphilo’ is a pun Lover of many, or Lover of Polia

The Story Poliphilo has

been shunned by his lover, Polia.

After a long night he falls into a deep slumber and finds himself in a dark forest.

The Story Poliphilo

becomes lost, escapes the woods, and falls asleep again.

In a dream within a dream, Poliphilo is taken to meet the queen of the nymphs.

The Story Poliphilo

declares his love for Polia to the Queen.

The nymphs take Polia to a series of gates.

Behind the third gate, Poliphilo and Polia are reuinted.

The Story The nymphs take the lovers to

the isle of Cythera to be wed. The boat, helmed by Cupid,

passes through several triumphal processions.

Polia tells her story on the island.

The Story Polia rejects

Poliphilo again; he faints

Polia becomes a priestess of Venus.

Polia revives Poliphilo with a kiss and declares her love for him to Venus.

The Story Polia treats Poliphilo with

indifference. The lovers are wed. As Poliphilo reaches to embrace

Polia, she disappears and he awakens from the dream.

The Poliphili & Incunabula Incunabulum: Texts printed

prior to 1501 From the Latin “incunabula”:

“swaddling clothes” Used to refer to the “infancy” of

printed materials

The Poliphili & Incunabula The Poliphili was published

anonymously in 1499 Publisher: Aldus Manutius, Venice As the colophon states, the book was

'most accurately done at Venice, in the month of December, 1499, at the house of Aldus Manutius'.

The Printing Aldus distances himself from the

text 1500: Publishes Epistole by Saint

Catherine Dedication to Cardinal Piccolomini

decries the ‘ribaldry’ of the presthood 1501: Preface to his Rudimentia

Grammatices decries the ‘multa scientes’ i.e., ‘polymaths’

Many woodcuts are ‘edited’ in later printings

The Printing Why did Aldus publish the text?

Aldus had only recently recovered from the plague and needed money (Grafton)

Leonardo Crasso had the work printed at his own expense (Grafton)

The Printing The first Aldine text printed in

the vernacular (Trippe) Not very well regarded upon

publication E.g., Castiglione refers to those

who “use Poliphilian words and stand so on the subtleties of rhetoric that the women lose confidence, and think themselves very ignorant” (Trippe, 2002)

The Printing Aldus Manutius (b. 1450) made

several typographical achievements with the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili Fonts Incorporation of images Shaping of the text

The Printing Fonts

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was set in roman type.

The particular type was most likely designed by Francesco Griffi. (Painter, 184)

Perhaps the first type “consciously designed for typographic purposes, in liberation from manuscript models” (ibid.).

The Printing Fonts

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili also includes several examples of Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew, and even Arabic.

The Printing Fonts

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili also includes several examples of Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew, and even Arabic.

The Printing The incorporation

of images The text is

renowned for its skillful combination of decorated initials with text

The Printing The incorporation

of images Further, the

combinations of woodcuts and text are renowned for their harmonious balance.

The Printing

The Printing

The Printing The technopaegnia

A handful of poems dating to classical Greece which are formatted in the shape of their subject

This style is used throughout the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

The Printing

The Printing Further, many woodcuts take on

a sort of pseudo-animation The placement of several

woodcuts is meant to portray motion

The Printing

The Printing

The Printing But the printing

was not without mistakes.

Despite the “most accurate printing”, an ‘errata’ followed the story, detailing mistakes in the text N.B. the

colophon at the bottom of the page

The Illustrations Perhaps the best known aspect

of the text. This was the only illustrated

Aldine text (Lefaivre) 172 woodcuts providing “a

continuous visual commentary…precisely keyed, episode by episode, to an entire literary text” (Grafton, p. 32)

Yet, of unknown origin

The Illustrations The identity of

the author is a source of contoversy.

Bellini, Botticelli, Bartolemmeo Montagna, Bennetto Bordone and Jacopo dei Barbari have been suggested due to the cut on a6 verso.

The Illustrations As Painter points out, the ‘b’ is

most likely the signature of the craftsman who cut the block (Painter, 180)

Andrea Mantegna was the most likely influence on the artist

The Illustrations

Complicating the matter is that many cuts are of inferior quality.

The Illustrations The cuts with the highest quality

are influenced by Mantegna and Bellini.

Painter suggests a young artist who was trained by Mantegna and employed by Bellini.

Why such a (relatively) limited output? We do not know Perhaps he simply died young.

The Illustrations

The Author Perhaps the greatest mystery: who

wrote the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili?

The prevailing theory is derived from an ingenious acrostic.

The decorated initials beginning each chapter spell out, ‘POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCVS COLVMNA PERMAVIT’ ‘Fra Francesco Colonna loved Polia

desperately.’

The Author

The Author On the last page of the dream, as

Polia disappears she claims, “You are the solid column and pillar of my life” (‘coluna & colume’)

The Author Polia’s epitaph

begins with the inscription, ‘FCI’: ‘Francesco Columna Invenit’

The Author Fra Colonna

1433: Born in Venice c. 1462: Meets ‘Polia’ in Treviso

A young girl from the Lelio family 1464: Plague in Treviso, ‘Polia’

enters convent 1467: ‘Polia’ dies in convent 1473: Colonna enrolls at University

of Padua

The author 1477: Faced with

excommunication from monastery for unnamed offense

1481: Turns up at SS. Giovanni e Paolo as master of theology

1500: Given permission to live outside the monastery

c. 1505: Flees Venice, possibly due to a scandalous affair

The author 1512: A marginal note appears

in a copy of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili reading, “he now lives in Venice at SS. Giovanni e Paolo”

1516: Accused of ‘deflowering a little girl’

1520: Reinstated at the monastery

1522: Appears before the Patriarch of Venice

October 2, 1527: Dies at age 94, destitute.

The Author However, another author has

been suggested: Leon Batista Alberti (1404-1472) Lefaivre suggests that Alberti’s

architectural expertise is the key The Hypnerotomachia is, in effect,

a treatise on the role of dreams in architectural design (Lefaivre, pp. 47-57)

The Author Lefaivre points to a passage in

Alberti’s architectural study, De re aedificatoria, in which Alberti compares architecture to a dream.

This tenuous link is, nonetheless, Lefaivre’s key argument. However, Françon does allude to

the geometric exactness of the descriptions in the Poliphili (p. 137)

The Author It should be noted that the

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is one of our best sources for information about 15th century architecture.

The Author

The Author

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili 1592: Partial English translation 1999: First complete English

translation by Joscelyn Godwin The hybrid “invented language” of

Latin, Italian, Greek, and Hebrew, with continually shifting grammatical structures, makes this an extremely difficult book to translate (Weidman, 2005)

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili In summation:

First vernacular text by Aldus Significant development in

typesetting Controversial A philological nightmare Of mysterious origin Significant achievement in

integrating text with illustration The greatest of incunabula

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili Sources:

Barolini, H. (1992). Aldus and his dream book. New York: Italica Press.

Colonna, F. (1999). Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. (J. Godwin, Trans.). Thames & Hudson: London. (Original published 1499)

Françon, M. (1954). Francesco Colonna’s Poliphili Hypnerotomachia and Pantagruel. Italica, 31(3), 136-137.

Grafton, A. (2000). The bright book of strife. The New Republic, 222(21), 31-36.

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Lefaivre, L. (1997). Leon Batista Alberti’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.

Painter, G. D. (1963). The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of 1499: an introduction on the dream, the dreamer, the artist, and the printer. Eugrammia Press: London.

Trippe, R. (2002). The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, image text, and vernacular poetics. Renaissance Quarterly, 55, 1222-1258.

Weidman, J. (2005). Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Choice, 42(7), 1214-1215.