Venice, 1499 : Hypnerotomachia Poliphili or the birth of neo-hieroglyphics

The publication in 1499 of theHypnerotomachia Poliphili, attributed to Francesco Colonna, by the publisher Aldo Manuce in Venice, marked the beginning of a learned and original mode of expression whose few surviving productions span a little over a century. Writing in neo-hieroglyphics was intended to revive, or even amplify, a form of communication directly linked to the world of ideas, without the need for a natural language. In so doing, the humanists of the ^15th century and the artists of the Renaissance believed they were connecting with an authentic tradition dating back to ancient Egypt, as remodeled by the philosophers and historians of the Platonic tradition. If the infatuation with hieroglyphic expression owed much to the rediscovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica, transmitted under the name Horapollon, it was also facilitated by the continuous practice of various modes of symbolic expression from late Antiquity to the dawn of the Renaissance, which helped to anchor the culture of hieroglyphic images in Christian concerns, thus legitimizing their use.