Figure 140
Page of Songe de Poliphile: Kerver, Paris
From a copy in the Harvard College Library (facsimile), University of Virginia (scan)
1546
A French edition was published by Jacques Kerver, and printed by Louis Baübloom (called Cyaneus), at Paris in 1546, entitled Hypnerotomachie ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile. Kerver’s edition is fine in its way—a more ambitious piece of book-making, put together with a more modern feeling. Not only of type and its arrangement—for instance, the management of title-pages and chapter headings—is this true; in the French version of the Italian illustrations we find the same tendency to complication and over-refinement. The initials in the French edition are exceedingly distinguished—a famous series, often reproduced.