Beschreibung:

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