Recently there was a post on the website Kottke.org about the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is a famous incunabulum - a book printed (not handwritten) using movable type before 1501. Known for its exceptional woodcut illustrations, unusual layout, and typographic flair, this erotic text was printed at the press of a Venetian publisher over 500 years ago - in 1499.
A complete electronic facsimile of the original Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was placed online in 1997. It can be viewed here. The editing of this electronic book was based on research published in Liane Lefaivre's Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Re-Cognizing the Architectural Body in the Early Italian Renaissance, where she attributes this unusual book to the talented Leon Battista Alberti. The architectural historian Alberto Pérez-Gómez updated the story of the Polyphili in his 1992 Polyphilo: or the Dark Forest Revisited - an Erotic Epiphany of Architecture.
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