Among the free-standing monuments inherited from classical antiquity --columns topped by statues, e, Michelangelo's David and many other examples reproduced the models' original functions, forms and purposes, it was not before the very end of the sixteenth century, thanks to Pope Sixtus V, that the obelisks were reused as free-standing monuments. During the Quattrocento and-- and in paintings -- by Mantegna, Lotto, Peruzzi, and Titian among others. Illustrations and paintings are nevertheless of basic importance to the understanding of the symbolic meanings that the obelisks took on in the process leading to the Sixtine era. The Hypnerotomachia is crucial to the definition of this cultural process, related to pagan imagery -- funerial memoriae and worldly glories-- as well as to Egyptian veiled sapientia of hieroglyphs. The influence of Poliphilo's culture on the representation of obelisks appears as the key to their correct intepretation, which radically changes the traditional one.
Costanza Barbieri