A spread from the copy of Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili… sold at Christie’s for £130,000.
At the very end of the 15th century, in Venice in December 1499, there emerged from the presses of that city’s most famous printer, Aldus Manutius, what is traditionally described as the most beautiful illustrated printed book of the Italian Renaissance.
In Francesco Colonna’s allegorical romance, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili… type, illustration, design and fine printing were combined to produce the book beautiful.