Colonna | La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo, Venice, 1545, second edition, the Syston Park copy

Francesco Colonna

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 Aldus Manutius), 1545

Second edition, folio (295 x 201 mm.), woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verson, numerous wooduct illustrations (without any censoring of images), SEVERAL EARLY ANNOTATIONS IN THE MARGINS, imprint leaf at end, nineteenth-century calf gilt by Charles Murton (with his stamp), spine in gilt compartments, Aldine device in gilt to covers, gilt edges, marbled endpapers, a few leaves torn and repaired, a few leaves with small inkstain at lower margin (not affecting text or illustrations), some light dampstaining

THE SYSTON PARK COPY OF the second edition of this richly illustrated work, a page-for-page reprint using the blocks from the 1499 first edition, reproducing all but six of the original woodcuts. "The crispness of the impressions after forty-five years of disuse is remarkable. The original woodblocks... 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). 

The present copy is notable for having all plates in an uncensored state. (Many other copies contain erasures and pen-and-ink deletions to the phallic woodcuts, evidently found too risqué by some contemporary readers). This copy also contains a number of early annotations in Latin in an elegant humanist hand, generally providing marginal glosses on the text, but also sometimes correcting typographical errors. Leaves n1, n2, n7, and n8 contain manuscript notes in Italian — perhaps in the hand of an agent of making from the print shop — referring to the mispagination of some text leaves.

The binding, by Charles Murton, a London bookbinder active between 1821 and 1840, is typical of volumes bound for the library of Sir John Hayford Thorold of Syston Park, who acquired it in 1825 according to his pencil note on the flyleaf. The Syston Park library once contained copies of both the first and second editions of Hypnerotomachia, both sold by Sotheby's in 1884.

PROVENANCE:

Sold by London bookseller Thomas Thorp in 1824 to Sir John Hayford Thorold, 10th Baronet (1773-1831) of Syston Park Hall, Lincolnshire: armorial bookplate and pencil note in Thorold's hand to flyleaf ("Thorpe | 1825"); by direct descent to Sir John Henry Thorold, 12th Baronet (1842-1922); his sale, Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 19 December 1884, lot 1596 ("second edition, with same beautiful woodcuts [as first edition], calf extra... with anchor on gold on sides, very scarce"), sold for £18; sold by Thomas Thorp, Guildford: excerpt from bookseller's catalogue pasted to flyleaf; E. Peter Jones: early twentieth century bookplate; sold Sotheby's, 18 October 1954, lot 183 ("a few leaves torn and repaired"), bought by Horace Commin for £85

LITERATURE:

Edit16 12823; UCLA 335; Mortimer, Harvard Italian 131; Renouard 133/14; for the publication history of the second edition: G. Scott Clemons & H. George Fletcher, Aldus Manutius: A legacy more lasting than bronze (New York 2015)