Colonna, La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo, Venice, Aldus, 1545, later red morocco gilt

Colonna, Francesco. La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo, cioè pugna d'amore in sogno. Dov'egli mostra, che tutte le cose humane non sono altro che sogno: et dove narra molt'altre cose degne di cognitione. Ristampato di novo, et ricorretto con somma diligentia, a maggior commodo de i lettori. Venice: (in the house of the sons of Aldo Manuzio), 1545

A crisp and clean copy of the second edition of this richly illustrated work, a page-for-page reprint using the blocks from the 1499 edition. “All but six woodcuts from the original edition reappear here, and the crispness of the impressions after forty-five years of disuse is remarkable. The original woodblocks, all but a half-dozen in good condition, had been found in storage at San Stefano in 1544, following a new agreement between the two Aldine families fifty years from the beginnings of the Press.” (G. Scott Clemons & H. George Fletcher, Aldus Manutius: A legacy more lasting than bronze (New York 2015), no. 82, this copy).

Folio (295 x 195 mm.). Roman type, 39 lines plus headline. collation: *⁴ a-y⁸ z¹⁰ A-E⁸ F⁴: 234 leaves (n1v and n8r transposed). Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso, numerous woodcut illustrations (without any censoring of images). (Title-page lightly spotted.)

binding: Nineteenth-century straight-grained red morocco gilt (304 x 210 mm), spine gilt in compartments, black morocco lettering-piece, gilt edges. (Extremities slightly rubbed.)

provenance: Notes in French on flyleaf. acquisition: Purchased from H.P. Kraus, New York, 1975. references: Edit16 12823; UCLA 335; Mortimer, Harvard Italian 131; Renouard 133/14