The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (The Strife of Love in a Dream)
by Francesco Colonna was the greatest achievement by the greatest printer of
the Renaissance (Aldus Manutius in Venice), a
spectacular combination of story and type and design and illustration; an
imaginative, secular Humanist self-romance like no other printed to that
time. ) See the entire text HERE.)
Hypnerotomachia means “the strife of love in a
dream”, and the reference to Poliphili refers to the narrator of the
story, Poliphilo, telling of the love affair between Polia and Poliphilo—the
master text of the whole story though is a description of ancient art and
architecture, all told in a wonderful
”macaronic mélange” of Italian and Latin, and which were the “exact accounts” seen
in Poliphilo’s dreams about Polia.. It is a
modernist book for being printed in the last year of the 15th
century (1499), and stands for vitality and grace and superb design, and
according to George Painter was the Finnegan’s
Wake of the fifteenth century. Painter
continues, and writing that “Gutenberg’s forty-two line Bible of 1455 and the Hypnerotomachia of 1499 confront one
another from opposite ends of the incunable period with equal and contrasting
pre-eminence. The Gutenberg Bible is somberly and sternly German, Gothic, Christian
and mediaeval; the Hypnerotomachia is
radiantly and graciously Italian, classic, pagan and renascent. These are two
supreme masterpieces of the art of printing, and stand at the two poles of
human endeavor and desire! “(Cited by Alan Thomas, Fine Books, 1967, pp 71-4).
Martin Lowry in his The
World of Aldus Manututus (Ithaca, New York, 1979) makes another
interesting statement on this masterpiece: “(Hypnerotomachia) was a linguistic and literary debauch, choked with
recondite imagery, erudite periphrases, and exotic verbiage: a work so bizarre
that many critics have felt a certain uneasiness at Aldus’ agreeing to print
it.”
It is truly an astonishing accomplishment, and its significance in the design of type and of the book really cannot be underestimated. As E.P. Goldsmidt stated (in The Printed Book of the Renaissance, 1950, p. 52): “In the North an astonishing proportion of all Renaissance ornament and accessory design can clearly be proved to derive from Colonna…”
The book is summarized here and below: