Promoting the past: The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili as antiquarian enterprise

Abstract

Despite Colonna's enticement above, very few readers in the fifteenth century would have taken seriously the claim that the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was sent down from the heavens as a receptacle of divine revelation. Those who shouted ‘poliphilian words!’ to stifle the pretentious windbags in the Venetian senate did not seem to mind profaning this enigmatic work. Castiglione, concerned above all with effective social grace, also found something objectionable in this learned fantasy when he derided the ‘Poliphilian’ language of those courtiers who had the bad taste to strut around in a costume of alienating erudition. Indeed, the hybrid artificial language of Colonna's illustrated romance is alienating for those who prefer to keep their Latin and Greek endings separate. The narrative plot consists of an incoherent series of encounters with fantastical architecture, amorous nymphs, and ancient occult mysteries, all of which our contemporary narrator, Poliphilo, describes in onerous detail. In short, this is a book admired for its images, but seldom read.