The Boccaccio of 1492 heralded a long series of illustrated books from the press of Gregorius de Gregoriis and his brother John. Most of these were devotional in their character, e.g. the Zardine de Oratione, the Monte dell' Oratione, the Vita e Miracoli del Sancto Antonio di Padova, the Passione di Cristo, &c. The Novellino of Masuccio Salernitano formed a pendant to the Boccaccio, and was published in the same year. To the Gregorii we also owe the magnificent border, in white relief on a black ground, to the Latin Herodotus of 1494, repeated again in the second volume of the works of S. Jerome published in 1497-98. Equally famous with any of these is the same printer's series of editions of the Fascicolo de Medicina of Johannes Ketham. In the first of
these, printed in 1491, the illustrations are confined to cuts of various dreadful-looking surgical instruments; but in 1493 large pictures were added, each occupying the whole of a folio page, and representing a dissection, a consultation of physicians, the bedside of a man struck down by the plague. The dissection was printed in several colours, but this experiment was abandoned, and a new block was cut for the subsequent editions. In some of his later books Gregorius repaired the mistake of the Boccaccio, and used excellent woodcut initials.
The Herodotus of 1494 has only its magnificent border by way of illustration, but other classical authors received much more generous treatment during this decade. An Italian Livy, with numerous vignettes, was printed in 1493 by Giovanni di Vercelli, and a Latin one in 1495 by P. Pincio, Lucantonio Giunta in each case acting as publisher.[11] In 1497 Lazarus de Soardis printed for Simon de Luere a Terence with numerous vignettes; and in the same year there appeared an illustrated edition, several times reprinted, of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, the printer being Giovanni Rossi and the publisher once more Lucantonio Giunta. The cuts in this work measure something over three inches by five, and have little borders on each side of them; but the fineness of the designs is lost by
poor engraving. Some of them are signed ia, others N.
We now approach one of the most famous books in the annals of Venetian printing, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili printed by Aldus in 1499, at the expense of a certain Leonardo Crasso of Verona, 'artium et iuris Pontificis consultus,' by whom it was dedicated to Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino. The author of the book was Francesco Colonna, a Dominican friar, who had been a teacher of rhetoric at Treviso and Padua, and was now spending his old age in the convent of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, his native city. Colonna's authorship of the romance is revealed in an acrostic formed by the initial letters of the successive chapters, which make up the sentence, 'Poliam Frater Franciscus Columna peramavit': 'Brother Francesco Colonna greatly loved Polia.' Who Polia was is a little uncertain. In the opening chapter she tells her nymphs that her real name was Lucretia, but she has been identified with a Hippolita Lelio, daughter of a jurisconsult at Treviso, who entered a convent after having been attacked by the plague, which visited Treviso from 1464 to 1468. On the other hand, it is plausibly suggested that Polia ([a]πολια]), 'the grey-haired lady,' is only a symbol of Antiquity, and at the beginning of the book there is at least a pretence of an allegory, though this is not carried very far.
In the story Polifilo, a name intended to mean
'the lover of Polia,' imagines himself in his dream as passing through a dark wood till he reaches a little stream, by which he rests. The valley through which it runs is filled with fragments of ancient architecture, which form the subjects of many illustrations. As he comes to a great gate he is frightened by a dragon. Escaping from this, he meets five nymphs (the five senses), and is brought to the court of Queen Eleuterylida (Free Will). Then follows a description of the ornaments of her palace and of four magnificent processions, the triumphs of Europa, Leda, and Danaë, and the festival of Bacchus. After this we have a triumph of Vertumnus and Pomona, and a picture of nymphs and men sacrificing before a terminal figure of Priapus. Meanwhile Polifilo has met the fair Polia, and together they witness some of the ceremonies in the Temple of Venus, and view its ornaments and those of the gardens round it. The first book, which is illustrated with one hundred and fifty-one cuts, now comes to an end. Book II describes how the beautiful Polia, after an attack of the plague, had taken refuge in a temple of Diana; how, while there, she dreamt a terrifying dream of the anger of Cupid, so that she was moved to let her lover embrace her, and was driven from Diana's temple with thick sticks; lastly, of how Venus took the lovers under her protection, and at the prayer of Polifilo caused Cupid to pierce an image of Polia with his dart, thereby fixing her affections as
firmly on Polifilo as he could wish—if only it were not all a dream! This second book is illustrated with only seventeen woodcuts, but as these are not interrupted by any wearisome architectural designs, their cumulative effect is far more impressive than those of the first, though many of the pictures in this—notably those of Polifilo in the wood and by the river, his presentation to Eleuterylida, the scenes of his first meeting with Polia, and some of the incidents of the triumphs—are quite equal to them. Unfortunately, the best pictures in both books are nearly square, so that it is impossible to reproduce them in an octavo except greatly reduced.
The woodcuts of the Polifilo have been ascribed to nearly a dozen artists, but in every case on the very slenderest grounds. Some of the cuts, like some of those in the Mallermi Bible, are marked with a little b; but this, as has been said, is almost certainly indicative of the engraver's workshop from which they proceeded, rather than of the artist who drew the designs. The edition of 1499 is a handsome folio; the text is printed in fine Roman type, with three or four different varieties of beautiful initial letters. The title and headings are printed in the delicate majuscules which belong to the type, and have a very graceful appearance. A second edition of the Polifilo was published in 1545, with, for the most part, the same cuts. This was followed in the next year by a