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Memories of the dark Paolo Forti
The home of Hypnos
This seventeenth-century allegorical print has recently become part of the collections of the “F. Anelli” Centre for Speleological Documentation. It illustrates the cave in the land of the Cimbri (the Alpine area between the Veneto and Trentino regions of Italy), which was home to Hypnos, the God of Sleep, as described by Ovid in his “Metamorphoses” (Book X, vv.592-649). In the deep cave, where silence reigns, neither sunlight nor gusts of wind ever penetrate, while sinister vapours rise up from
the soil, as the waters of the Lethe (the River of Forgetfulness) flow off to one side. At the centre of the cave, Hypnos sleeps soundly in a bed of feathers, while around him lie a plethora of dreams still waiting to be dreamt. The print captures the moment in which Iris, Goddess of Rainbows, wakes Hypnos at the request of Juno, so that he may send his son Morpheus to Alcyone, daughter of Atlas, with a deceptive dream.
