Hypnerotomachie ou Discours du songe de Poliphile

In-folio of (6) ff., 157 ff., (1) f. with printer’s mark. Limp vellum, marginal dampstaining, marginal restoration on 3 ff.

338 x 215 mm.

Colonna, Francesco. Hypnerotomachia or Discourse of Poliphilo’s Dream. Newly translated from Italian into French.
Paris, Jacques Kerver, 1554.

Second French edition of this extraordinary romance, one of the most significant love novels of the 1500s and the most famous Italian book of the Renaissance.
Brunet, IV, 778-779; Harvard, French Books, no. 146.

Attributed to Francesco Colonna and published in 1499 in a famous edition by Aldus Manutius, this important humanist work was composed in a language of supreme refinement.

Its symbolic subject, “the struggle of love in a dream” of Poliphilo, made it famous, and even more so the way it seeks—in a scholarly artistic pursuit, typical of humanists—to express the intense awareness of life’s splendor.

The text is of paramount interest and can rightly be regarded as one of the founding works of the novel of fiction.

Magnificently printed by Marin Messelin for Jacques Kerver, this beautiful edition is the second to feature the first French translation of this major work, by Jean Martin.
An interesting variation from the first French edition of 1546 lies in this preliminary leaf, signed Jacques Gohory, close to the Pléiade and the Circle of Antoine de Baïf, on the verso of the title.
This note, published for the first time in this 1554 edition, issued just after the death of Jean Martin, confirms the authorship of the work and the identity of the translator.

The exceptionally beautiful iconography makes this book one of the most famous illustrated works of the 16th century.
It had a considerable influence not only on book aesthetics of the time but also on the many applications of decorative art.

The ornamentation is no longer that of Italian books but that of the Fontainebleau school, and some of the compositions are attributed to the talent of Jean Goujon.

The illustration consists of 183 superb engravings, 13 of them full-page, a historiated title, 2 headpieces, 38 ornate initials, and the beautiful unicorn printer’s device. The engravings interpret those of the 1499 Aldine edition very freely. These are the same figures as in the first French edition of 1546, in which 14 engravings relating to subjects of architecture and gardens had been added. One illustration was redrawn on f. B6 with capitals and columns.

Numerous large initials on stippled grounds and several types of decorated headpieces complete the particularly refined ornamentation.

Beautiful copy of a major aesthetic work of Renaissance literature.