Alchemical Hands in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Why It Matters for the Hypnerotomachia

Five nymphs embody sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. They bathe, dress, and guide Poliphilo through the queen's palace in a sequence that combines sensory education with erotic initiation. Their ministrations constitute one of the HP's most sustained ekphrastic passages.

Why It Matters in Scholarship

The five-senses allegory connects the HP to Neoplatonic traditions linking sensory experience to philosophical knowledge. Hunt (1998) reads the nymph sequence as staging the relationship between bodily perception and architectural understanding.

Key Passages / Evidence

• # Some Foreign Imitators of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili <!-- Page 1 --> Some Foreign Imitators of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili Author(s): Mario Praz Source: Italica, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1947),... [Praz 1947 (foreign imitators)]
• ... edition of Hypnerotomachia by Andrew Lang (London, 1890), which claims to have been reprinted 'with absolute fidelity' from the original. I must record my thanks to my colleague Miss B. M. H.... [Ure 1952 (vocabulary notes)]
• ... and whispering small sighes. Which she cunningly perceiuing, brake on this new accident with these words: Oh how many be there which would [v] most gladly behold these triumphes, and... [HP primary text]

Source Documents

Blunt 1937 (HP in French art); Gollnick (Apuleius dreamworld); HP (Da Capo edition); HP primary text; Lefaivre 1997 (Alberti attribution); O'Neill (Durham thesis); Praz 1947 (foreign imitators); Priki (text-image boundary); Ure 1952 (vocabulary notes)