Alchemical Hands in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Why It Matters for the Hypnerotomachia

The HP's chapter initials spell POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCVS COLVMNA PERAMAVIT ('Brother Francesco Colonna loved Polia greatly'). This embedded message, formed by the sequence of historiated initials, is the primary evidence for attributing authorship to a Dominican friar.

Why It Matters in Scholarship

Casella and Pozzi (1959) established the acrostic attribution as canonical. Lefaivre (1997) challenged it by arguing the acrostic could have been inserted by someone other than the author. O'Neill (2021) surveys how the acrostic has shaped and constrained all subsequent authorship debates.

Key Passages / Evidence

• ... The HP, as used by the prolific annotators in this study, can then be framed as a ‘humanistic activity book’. The interaction of annotators in pen-and-ink can be considered as a form of... [Russell 2014 (PhD thesis)]
• <!-- Page 78 --> the Elder in both Benedetto and Paolo’s approach to the text. This is most likely due to Pliny’s own origins in Como, which foregrounded the author the Naturalis historia in the... [Russell 2014 (PhD thesis)]
• ... and elevation alongside a disembodied analysis from a birds-eye perspective, completes the transformation of architectonic examination. This establishes a threefold alteration in the way... [O'Neill (Durham thesis)]

Source Documents

HP (Da Capo edition); HP primary text; Lefaivre 1997 (Alberti attribution); O'Neill (Durham thesis); O'Neill (authorship); Russell 2014 (PhD thesis); Word_Image_1998_jan_vol_14_iss_1_2_Bury_John_Chapter_III_of_the_Hypnerotomachia