Hypnerotomachia Poliphili 

 A Dream Analysis

Poliphilo's Architecture

When the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was published in 1499, the architectural Renaissance in Rome was still an emerging idea. Poliphilo is very critical of contemporary architects, and his book is in part an attempt to reform architecture by a reminder of its potential and its ancient high standards (and of his own powers of invention). Rome in many ways later became the city of Poliphilo's dream; obelisks became a program of Sixtus V and a focus for Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, or his elephant; villas sprung up around Rome to emulate the villa of the text (the Farnesina, Villas Madama and Giulia); the Tempietto realized the temple of his dream.

Poliphilo's description of the art and architecture he encounters occupies a significant portion of the Hypnerotomachia; it could in fact be said it is the book's raison d'être. It is barely counterbalanced by his emotional trials, his love for Polia, and its eventual fulfilment. His architectural descriptions are especially remarkable for three characteristics: their incredible (often excruciating) detail; their love of the marvellous, which keeps him in a state of curiosity and wonder; and their passion (akin to his passion for Polia).

We would like to see the Hypnerotomachia as symptomatic in the extreme of the Renaissance Humanist mind in its approach to art (an antidote to both modernism and neo-classicism), and therefore a suggestive model of thinking about making Humanist art again today.

The Obelisk

"Lifting my eyes to the place where the wooded hills seemed to meet, I saw far off an incredibly tall structure in the form of a tower, or a high watch tower, next to a great building that was not yet fully visible, but seemed to be a work of antiquity. I could see the pleasant hills surrounding the valley rising ever higher as they neared this edifice, and seeming to join it, so that it was connected with the hills on either side and made with them an enclosed valley....the more closely I approached it, the more it appeared to be a huge and magnificent object, and the greater was my desire to admire it; for now it did not look like a high watch-tower, but rather a tall obelisk resting on a vast mass of stone." Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, trans. Joscelyn Godwin, London: Thames & Hudson, 1999, p. 22

In Poliphilo's dream, nature/the forest is a place of fear; he is first relieved, then overjoyed, by his encounters with evidence of human culture. In this case, nature has been shaped by the human hand into an object of admiration, and the obelisk/pyramid/ portal becomes a doorway to a better place. He may have been aware of Petra through travellers' descriptions, but his nature shaped into architecture fired the mind of Renaissance garden designers and makers of fountains, and had something to do with the obelisk fixation of the next 300 years.

Fertile Invention

"....I saw innumerable trophies, booty and spoils; endless ornaments of ox- and horse-skulls arranged at proper intervals; cornucopiæ with the remains of leaves, apples, stems, pods and other fruits swelling their bodies, with putti playfully riding on them. From all this I could well judge how fertile the learned architect's mind must have been; how careful, studious and industrious he was, and how vigilant his inventive mind; how hard he had worked to achieve so voluptuous an effect; what eurythmy had informed the subtleties of the stone-carver's work, and what artistry the sculptor showed in his stone." Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, trans. Joscelyn Godwin, London: Thames & Hudson, 1999, p. 56

Poliphilo sees the quality of architecture as representative of the virtues of the architect: for him, abundance reveals an inventive mind and labor; complexity means our architect was studious, careful, industrious and vigilant; and artistic quality reveals virtuosity. It is important to remember that the word "creativity" only came into the aesthetic lexicon fairly recently (within the last century); previously, only God could be "creative" (that is, make something out of nothing) and an artist was praised instead for being "inventive" (that is, finding new ways of doing things).

Who made Poliphilo's Portal?

"Might it not be a great and praise-worthy thing, if one could easily describe, point by point, the incredible work and unthinkable assemblage of this vast structure, the grandeur of the edifice and of its beautiful portal, suitable situated in a lofty and conspicuous place? The pleasure of contemplation exceeded even my great wonder, because, by Jupiter, I thought that its making would not have been difficult for higher beings; and I suspected that no human art or science could have put together such vastness or expressed such grand ideas, invented such novelties, ornamented them with such elegance, arranged them with such extraordinary symmetry, and accomplished the splendid and unimaginable ostentation of this structure without any addition or correction." Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, trans. Joscelyn Godwin, London: Thames & Hudson, 1999, p.58

This a precisely-measured dream of the past. But is Poliphilo describing a work of antiquity, the gods, or his imagination? In fact, it is an imaginary antiquity with divine quality that he encounters. It is notable that he did not get lost in the Roman Forum, for example, but invented one instead. In that sense, Poliphilo himself made the portal he "discovers". Antiquity for the Renaissance was a departure point, not a destination; they did not want to recreate it, they wanted to exceed it. In this case, Poliphilo exceeds the past superabundantly, perhaps unachieveably. But it is a richly complex middle ground between past and present that he occupies, one that encapsulates the classical mythic idea that Memory (Mnemosyne) was the mother of the Muses.

The Palace

"However, my first encounter with this superb, sumptuous and magnificent palace, its ideal situation and its marvellous symmetrical design produced in me an extraordinary joy and gratitude, while the dignity of its construction made me want to look at more, for I had reason to believe that its skilful architect was pre-eminent over all who had ever built. What scaffoldings of beams and rafters, what arrangement of halls, chambers and passages, what walls covered and encrusted with precious panels, what a wonderful system of ornamentation, what unfading colours in the mural paintings, what proportion between columns and spaces." Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, trans. Joscelyn Godwin, London: Thames & Hudson, 1999, p.92

One experience in theHypnerotomachia is a doorway to another, and each architectural marvel exceeds the last. For Poliphilo, the achievements of others (that is, his invented achievements of others) is an excuse for joy. To him, an enduring architecture which incorporates all the arts is the paradigmatic human achievement, and a summa of its society's aspirations.