THE SACRED GROVE OF BOMARZO : 4th stage
Pegasus delights the visitor, transporting him to the highest level of the celestial sphere, allowing him to slake his thirst at the wells of clarity.
One then discovers a number of marvelously voluptuous and beautiful
demigoddesses. But, upon nearing them, their gazes are frighteningly fixed,
their legs are transformed into scaled tentacles. Sirens and bat women.
Vicino Orsini thus regenerates, resuscitates the ordeal in the dream of
voluptuousness.
Woman is the riddle which must be solved: she is the antrum, the receptacle,
the bearer of life. To Poliphilus,
she is the door to initiation:
"The true path of love is to start with the beauties found on earth and, with
eyes fixed on supreme beauty, to constantly rise to it, passing all the degrees
of the scale; from beautiful bodies to beautiful feelings to beautiful
knowledge, one arrives at the ultimate Knowledge, the sole purpose of which is
Beauty itself."
To test the visitor one final time, Vicino Orsini and Pirro Ligorio have come up with the illusion of illusions: