[Hypnerotomachia Poliphili , in French]. Le tableu des riches inventions couvertes du voile des feintes amoureuses, qui sont representées dans le songe de Poliphile desvoilées des ombres du songe & subtilement exposées par Béroalde de Verville . Collation: *-5*4, A-Rr4 = 180 ff., complete. Engraved title, 154, [6] ff. Illustrated with an elaborately engraved title-page depicting alchemical symbols, and 181 woodcuts (all but the final three printed from the 1546 Kerver edition). 4to., 251 x 191 mm, bound in contemporary full calf, blind stamped central medallion. Paris: Matthieu Guillemot, 1600.
First Edition of Béroalde de Verville's French translation of the most famous book of the Italian Renaissance, "The Strife of Love in a Dream of Poliphilus." This editions importance is elevated by the inclusion of alchemical commentary and its sensational engraved frontispiece, a masterpiece of Mannerist design. In essence this edition acts a ‘Rosetta Stone’ for the alchemical interpretation of Colonna’s famously cryptic work. Béroalde the editor / translator adds his long "Recueil Steganographique" in which the symbols contained within the frontispiece are explained in words; this frontispiece and exposition are tantamount to a statement on the fundamental ideas of alchemy.
This edition also introduced the book to a wider audience and had a pervasive influence over French seventeenth century culture. References to it are found in literature, satire, the visual arts, architecture and landscape architecture, most notably being the source of garden design at Versailles, the most obvious being the Colonnade.
A copy of the third issue according to Mortimer. Some pale staining, pages lightly evenly toned which is common to this book on account of the paper stock, margins a little tight in some places, a few small professional repairs to the binding, overall very good.
Mortimer, French 148. Index Aureliensis *143.139. Brunet IV, 779. Brun p. 174. Anthony Blunt, "The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in Seventeenth Century France," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes , I (1937-38): 117-37.
