Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Re-Cognizing the Architectural Body in the Early Italian Renaissance

About this book

The enigmatic polyglot Hypnerotomachia Poliphili -- the inspiration for thebestselling novel The Rule of Four -- has fascinated architects and historians since its publicationin 1499. Part fictional narrative and part scholarly treatise richly illustrated with woodengravings the book is an extreme case of erotic furor aimed at everything -- especiallyarchitecture -- that the protagonist Poliphilo encounters in his quest for his beloved Polia.Among the instances of the books manifesto-like character is Polias tirade defending the right ofwomen to express their own sexuality probably the first sustained argument of this type whichlifts the books erotic theme from the realm of ribaldry to the more daring one of sexual politics.Liane Lefaivre offers the closest critical-theoretical reading of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili to date placing it within both the historical context of the quattrocento and the rethinking of the metaphorof the architectural body.Lefaivre is the first to attribute this strange dreamlike bookdefinitively to none other than the arch-rationalist Leon Battista Alberti. Intended as his finaltext she argues the book is the legacy of a humanist passionate about his lifes work a treatiseon the role of dreamwork in design by one of the most creative minds of the Renaissance and amanifesto in defense of humanism by a man who had been dismissed by an anti-humanist pope after athirty-year career in the papal service.