COLONNA, Francesco.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. First edition of this highly prized incunable, referred to as the most beautiful illustrated book of the Renaissance, the epitome of Aldine design, and one of two "supreme masterpieces of the art of printing" alongside the Gutenberg Bible (George Painter, quoted in Barolini, p. 6). This copy is in the first state, with the nine sheets as described by Harris all in the original setting. The Priapus woodcut is unexpurgated, despite being censored in the vast majority of copies.The typeface used here, based on ancient Roman inscriptions, was created by Aldus's type designer Francesco Griffo of Bologna especially for this book, which has long been admired for its harmonious marriage of text and image. Its typographical innovations include reinventing the traditional text layout, with the words gracefully tapering at the chapter endings into goblet-like shapes.The text is written in a unique hybrid of Latin vocabulary imposed upon Italian syntax. But there is also use of Greek fonts, as well as one of the earliest examples of Hebrew type, and some Arabic. There are three Arabic inscriptions in the text, the first not illustrated, the other two accompanied by woodcuts. The presence of Arabic text in the book is remarkable for several reasons, not least because the xylographic inscriptions are the first Arabic words published in print. (Breydenbach's Peregrinatio in terram sanctam, 1486, contains the first Arabic letters, but only the alphabet.)The use of

• Printing: first

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