These designs, of which the few that can be given afford only a slight idea, so various are they in beauty and feeling, have been attributed to many illustrious masters, 
Fig. 29.—Ornament. From the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili." Venice, 1499.Giovanni Bellini and Raphael among others; but perhaps the conjecture which assigns them to Benedetto Montagna is the most probable. They show what remarkable artistic taste there was even in the inferior masters of Italy. "They are," says Professor Sydney Colvin,[1] "without their like in the history of wood-cutting; they breathe the spirit of that delightful moment when the utmost of imaginative naïveté is combined with all that is needed of artistic accomplishment, and in their simplicity are in the best instances of a noble composition, a masculine firmness, a delicate vigor and graceful tenderness in the midst of luxurious or even licen-
- ↑ The Academy, October 15, 1872, pp. 383 et seq. Vide, also, Albert Ilg, "Ueber den Kunsthistorischen Werth der Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kunstliteratur in der Renaissance." Wien, 1872. The original edition of the Dream of Poliphilo is rare and costly. It was re-issued in Venice, in 1545, and in Paris, with some variations (of which some account is given on a later page), in 1546. There is an abridged translation in French by Legrand, without cuts, printed by Didot in 1804.
