Alchemical Hands in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Why It Matters for the Hypnerotomachia

The HP describes elaborate mosaics depicting mythological scenes in tessellated stone and glass. Poliphilo reads them as visual texts, interpreting their iconography alongside their material composition, treating surfaces as carriers of hermeneutic content.

Why It Matters in Scholarship

The mosaic passages contribute to the HP's broader interest in surfaces that carry meaning. Stewering (2000) analyzes how the HP treats architectural ornament as a form of visual argument rather than mere decoration.

Key Passages / Evidence

• ... of architecture in a learned text since antiquity. It is presented in terms of garments that don the body of the structure. Indeed architecture is “all the things that are added to the... [Lefaivre 1997 (Alberti attribution)]
• ... Alberti, who wrote about the building in Book VII of his De re aedificatoria as the “round basilica.” The source for the octagonal baths, according to Calvesi, is “la rotonda” of Albano near... [Lefaivre 1997 (Alberti attribution)]
• ... in the late seventeenth century or even much later, and Florio in his Italian dictionary of 1598 still translates tessellare as ' to make or work checker-worke or inlaid work.' R.D., how- ever,... [Ure 1952 (vocabulary notes)]

Source Documents

Blunt 1937 (HP in French art); Jarzombek 1990 (structural problematics); Lefaivre 1997 (Alberti attribution); O'Neill (Durham thesis); O'Neill (authorship); Priki 2009 (reception); Ure 1952 (vocabulary notes); Wright (Alberti and HP)