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Folio (202 x 313 mm). 234 ff. (collation: *4, a-y8, z10, A-E8, F4). With 171 woodcut illustrations and initials. Roman type, 39 lines plus headline. Crushed dark brown morocco by Riviere & Son, blind-tooled in period style, spine with gilt lettering. All edges gilt. First edition of this typographic masterpiece, the apogee of Venetian xylography in the quattrocento. The most celebrated illustrated printed book of the Italian Renaissance (and the only illustrated book published by Aldus), the "Hypnerotomachia" is generally considered the magnum opus of Aldine craft and a veritable design encyclopedia. William M. Ivins called it "possibly the best known of all illustrated incunabula" and "one of the greatest monuments of the printer's art, typographer and woodcutter having rarely collaborated to such good effect" (Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 18.11 [1923], pp. 249ff.). - Issued without the author's name, the book is an allegorical romance novel which includes architectonic theories and descriptions of art, indeed "an architectural treatise woven into a love story" (Lefaivre). In a dream, Poliphilo becomes lost in the forest. Pursuing his mistress Polia through mystical landscapes, he starts to follow the five senses, symbolized by nymphs, all within antique palaces, ruins, pyramids, and obelisks, rich in architectural descriptions, before finding her and gaining enlightenment at the temple of Venus. The text has had various interpretations over the centuries, and has served as a sort of humanist compendium. - The attribution of the woodcuts, specifically made for this work, has long been debated. "Although neither the inventor nor the cutter is known, the engravings have been associated with the names of the greatest contemporary artists: fra Giocondo, Carpaccio, Bellini, Mantegna and even the young Raphael [.] It has led to the widespread consensus that is the best of all the illustrated early masterpieces of printing or incunabula" (Lefaivre). The cuts are today given as the work of the Paduan miniaturist Bordon, supported by the initial "b" that appears in two illustrations, and because of the similarity of style to miniatures firmly attributed to the artist. "The mass of details the book supplies concerning the size, proportions, materials, colors, plan, elevation and facade of buildings is often even richer than in Alberti's 'De Re Aedificatoria' (1485). Schlosser, in his great synthetic work on the artistic literature of the Renaissance published in 1924, is probably the first to place it firmly within the canon of architectural treatises, ranking it alongside the works of Alberti, Filarete, Fra Giocondo, Cesariano. Other scholars have gone so far as to attribute the work to Alberti in collaboration with several other humanists" (ibid.). - The work has historically been attributed to Francesco Colonna (ca. 1433-1527), a Dominican from the convent of San Zanipolo, professor of grammar and theology in Treviso and Padua; his name is revealed by the famous acrostic of the woodcut initials. - Washed, resulting in some light browning, with traces of some washed annotations. Title-page slightly soiled, repaired tear to e8, z10 slightly stained, errata leaf supplied from another copy though almost imperceptible, centre of woodcut on m6 erased and reinstated in pen facsimile, centre of woodcut on x8v erased. Manuscript note in Italian at foot of c1v. - Issue with text amended by stamping to "sanequam" in line 5 of title on a1 recto. All variant settings noted by Neil Harris are here in the original setting, as is sheet s3.6, as noted by John Lancaster in 2015 (as BSB-Ink C-471: s3r li. 17 ends "apro-" || s3v li. 1 ends "Her-"). - 1. From the library of Alexandre Paul Rosenberg (1921-87), with his bookplate, designed by Picasso, a friend of his art dealer father. - 2. H. P. Kraus, cat. 154 (New York, 1979), item 28. - 3. Laurence Witten, cat. 11 (Southport, 1980), item 98. - 4. Thomas Kimball Brooker, oil industry executive (. N° de réf. du vendeur 65768
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