# Hypnerotomachia Poliphili > Francesco Colonna (attributed) - December 1499 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/francesco-colonna-hypnerotomachia/hypnerotomachia-poliphili-lazaro-galdiano/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-23 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Francesco Colonna (attributed) - **Date:** December 1499 - **Medium:** Letterpress printing in roman type, with woodcut illustrations, on paper - **Dimensions:** Format in-folio; exact trimmed dimensions of this copy not published in the sources consulted - **Object type:** Printed book - **Period:** Italian Renaissance, fifteenth century (incunable) - **Current location:** Museo Lazaro Galdiano, Madrid - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary Printed in Venice in December 1499 by Aldus Manutius on commission from Leonardo Crasso, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili tells a single continuous dream in an invented hybrid of Latin and Italian, illustrated with 172 woodcuts that made it one of the most admired examples of book design to survive from the Renaissance. Its author signed only an acrostic, POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCVS COLVMNA PERAMAVIT, naming a Francesco Colonna without settling which of two candidates of that name wrote it: a Venetian Dominican friar, the traditional identification, or Francesco Colonna, Lord of Palestrina, a Roman nobleman proposed from the 1980s by the art historian Maurizio Calvesi. Its woodcuts are traditionally given to the Paduan illuminator Benedetto Bordon on stylistic grounds that fall short of documentary proof.This copy, inventory 15678 at the Museo Lazaro Galdiano in Madrid, entered the historical record only when it appeared in the private library of the financier and collector Jose Lazaro Galdiano, who died on 1 December 1947 and left his entire collection to the Spanish State. The Fundacion Lazaro Galdiano was constituted in 1948 and the museum opened in his former residence in January 1951, where the book has remained since. How and when Lazaro Galdiano acquired it is not documented in the sources consulted for this record, leaving a genuine gap of roughly four and a half centuries between the book's printing and its documented presence in his hands.The type Francesco Griffo cut for this edition outlived its own metal, returning in 1923 as Monotype's Poliphilus and shaping, alongside its sibling revival Bembo, the look of twentieth-century book printing. The book's authorship and its illustrator remain genuinely open questions in current scholarship, argued by named scholars from real evidence, not settled mysteries kept alive for effect. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **December 1499** Printed by Aldus Manutius's press in Venice, financed by Leonardo Crasso `[documented]` (printing) Crasso is named in the book's own colophon as having paid for the edition. This establishes the object's origin, not the ownership history of this specific surviving copy. - **1499-by 1947** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, dealer, sale or acquisition date is documented in the sources consulted for this specific copy between its printing in 1499 and its recorded presence in Jose Lazaro Galdiano's library by the time of his death in 1947. This is a recorded gap of roughly four and a half centuries, not a claim that the copy was untraceable in principle, only that this record found no documentation of it. - **by 1947-1 December 1947** Jose Lazaro Galdiano, Madrid `[documented]` (private collection) The book was part of Lazaro Galdiano's personal library at his death on 1 December 1947. No acquisition date or source is documented for how it entered his collection. - **1 December 1947-17 July 1948** Spanish State, by testamentary bequest `[documented]` (bequest) Lazaro Galdiano made his will naming the Spanish State as heir two days before his death. The State's acceptance of the inheritance was published by decree-law on 19 December 1947 and gazetted on 26 December 1947. The Fundacion Lazaro Galdiano was constituted by law on 17 July 1948 to hold and administer the collection. - **17 July 1948-present** Fundacion Lazaro Galdiano / Museo Lazaro Galdiano, Madrid `[documented]` (museum collection) The Museo Lazaro Galdiano opened to the public in Lazaro Galdiano's former Madrid residence on 27 January 1951 and has held the book since, currently as inventory 15678. ## Open questions - Which Francesco Colonna actually wrote the book: the Venetian Dominican friar of the traditional identification, or Francesco Colonna, Lord of Palestrina, as Maurizio Calvesi and later scholars have argued? No document in either man's own hand claims authorship. - Who designed the 172 woodcuts? The attribution to Benedetto Bordon rests on a lower-case b worked into two cuts and a stylistic resemblance to his miniatures, not on a signed or documented commission. - How and from whom did Jose Lazaro Galdiano acquire this copy, and when? No dealer, sale, or acquisition date for inventory 15678 was found in the sources consulted. - Was a real woman behind the figure of Polia, or is she purely an allegorical construction? The sources consulted for this record do not identify a documented real-world model. - What did this copy cost Lazaro Galdiano, if he paid for it at all rather than receiving it by exchange or gift? No purchase price for this copy was found in the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] Museo Lazaro Galdiano, museum's own object page, 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili'. - [2] Wikimedia Commons, file description page for the photograph of the Museo Lazaro Galdiano's copy, taken during the exhibition Thirty Masterpieces from the Lazaro Galdiano Library, confirming inventory 15678 and CC0 licensing. - [3] Wikipedia, 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a scholarly critical edition. - [4] Wikipedia, 'Francesco Colonna (writer)'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a scholarly biographical study. - [5] Review of Stefano Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili e Roma: Metodologie euristiche per lo studio del Rinascimento (Rome: Gangemi, 2012), summarizing and extending Maurizio Calvesi's Palestrina/Lord-of-Palestrina authorship thesis and its topographical evidence from the Nile Mosaic of Palestrina. - [6] Maurizio Calvesi, official website, biographical and bibliographical listing covering his fifteenth-to-seventeenth-century research including the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili authorship thesis. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Jose Lazaro Galdiano'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the Fundacion Lazaro Galdiano's own institutional history and archive. - [8] Rhian Davies, 'Jose Lazaro Galdiano (30 de enero de 1862 - 1 de diciembre de 1947)', biographical note, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. - [9] Wikipedia, 'Benedetto Bordone'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a monographic study of Bordon's book-illustration work. - [10] Fonts In Use, typeface entry for 'Poliphilus', covering its 1923 Monotype revival and Stanley Morison's role at Monotype from 1923. - [11] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, object entry for Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, accession 23.73.1. - [12] Fine Books & Collections, 'Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili Leads Italian Incunabula Auction', on a Catawiki sale of a copy of the 1499 edition, February 2023. - [13] Sotheby's Paris, 'Livres et Manuscrits du XVe siecle a nos jours', lot listing for a copy of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Venice 1499, March 2023 sale (pre-sale estimate; realised price not confirmed in this source). - [14] University of Melbourne, Archives and Special Collections blog, 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Woodcuts in the Italian and French Editions'. - [15] Gardenvisit, 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and renaissance garden design history'. - [16] Yale Peabody Museum, 'Echoes of Egypt', object entry on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili's invented hieroglyphs and their role in Renaissance ideas of Egyptian writing. - [17] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object record 365313 (accession 23.73.1), confirming public-domain status and credit line, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1923. - [18] Santa Clara University, Archives and Special Collections digital exhibit 'Paper, Wood, and Copper', entry on Aldus Manutius's dolphin-and-anchor printer's device and its first appearance in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. - [19] Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili as the major work of Renaissance Venetian art theory. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.