Alchemical Hands in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Keller situates the acquisition of a 1545 edition of the HP within the history of the G. Holmes Perkins architectural library at the University of Pennsylvania, a collection built to support design pedagogy and historical research. He frames the HP as an emotional and imaginative counterpart to the rules-based architectural treatises by Vitruvius, Alberti, Serlio, and Palladio that form the collection's core. The article traces Perkins's conviction that modernism was part of a longer historical continuum, arguing that the HP's integration of text and image makes it a vital resource for understanding how architects have used publishing as a tool of professional persuasion.