Intersession Research

Now that classes are wrapping up it is time to look towards the next coming weeks. Starting next Monday I will be starting to scan illustrations and put both colored and non colored in a spread sheet, I'm going to take to the end of the month to find any textual evidence to support the colors that were used. The other big project I have to do is transcribe and attempt to translate the reader response found in each copy. I plan on having that done hopefully by Week 1. Now that I am no longer doing any imaging on the book, it leaves a lot more time to do these two projects as well as look for more sources and reread the sources I have and taking careful notes on them. At this point I don't really know what will come out of this research but I am really excited to find out.

Marginalia in the Cary's copy

Marginalia at Columbia University

Reader Response at Newberry 

The Evolution of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

When I first started looking at the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in the early summer I at first only wanted to look into the printing history. Once I learned more about the reader response found in the Cary's edition I knew I wanted to focus on reader response. That summer I really dedicated to researching different copies to see if there were any similarities in what the owners were saying or when they were writing. However, this project has really come to focus on the provenance and the colored woodblock illustrations (69/172 are colored in some way). My new focus is to bring in multispectral imaging and piece together when the coloring was done, using what method (I think its watercolor) and by using the provenance - determine who did it - if possible. My research has turned more experiment based and that it something I never saw happening. I hope that I can get this experiment done during intersession that hopefully will come to some conclusions.

An example of a colored woodblock illustration found in the 1499 edition at Columbia University.