THE RENAISSANCE SPARKED an interest in decoding the hidden knowledge believed to be contained in hieroglyphics. The attraction of the mysterious Egyptian images dates back to Antiquity and still fascinates us to this day, but it was especially rekindled in Europe towards the end of the fifteenth century. The entire symbolic culture of the Renaissance and Baroque comes together in this renewed Humanist curiosity.

The work that served as the point of departure was the Hieroglyphica by Horapollo, which was published in 1505 by Aldo Manuzio. The Greek text – derived from the Alexandrian spirit, which was favorably disposed to the fusion of oriental elements – was enthusiastically embraced by Ficino and the Neoplatonism associated with Florence. Artists fixed their attention on those symbols and began to see them as motifs and sources of invention. Later on, the success of Horapollo was cemented by the edition with commentary by Pierio Valeriano – with spectacular engravings beginning in 1575 – which endowed the hieroglyphic material with an encyclopedic order and utilized it for the moral or thological analysis of the natural world.

Valeriano alone, a veritable storehouse of information of quite varied origin, and quoted ad infinitum throughout the Renaissance and Baroque, would justify the existence of this CD, but it contains many other materials: one can compare the ancient sources of Plutarch or Iamblichus, consult the commentaries of Caussin and access Baroque interpretations, and finally have available the complete series of hieroglyphics and pseudo-hieroglyphics that were known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As a complement, we edit Francesco Colonna’s inaugural and enigmatic work, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii, in such close proximity to the world of hieroglyphics.

In preparation.