Alchemical Hands in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Nygren reexamines the assumed influence of the HP on Correggio's paired paintings of Venus, arguing that the relationship is more complex than the standard Neoplatonic sacred-versus-profane reading allows. He demonstrates that Correggio's images are palimpsests of multiple sources, not solely derived from the HP. The essay then shifts emphasis to understanding the HP as an articulation of a late fifteenth-century model of antiquarian beholdership, exemplified by Mantegna and Antico, positioning the HP as a document of a particular mode of engaging antiquity soon eclipsed by Giorgione and Titian.