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Leon Battista Alberti

Leon Battista Alberti (Italian: [leˈom batˈtista alˈbɛrti]; 14 February 1404 – 25 April 1472) was an Italian Renaissance humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer; he epitomised the nature of those identified now as polymaths. He is considered the founder of Western cryptography, a claim he shares with Johannes Trithemius.[1][2]

Leon Battista Alberti

14 February 1404

Genoa, Republic of Genoa

25 April 1472(1472-04-25) (aged 68)

Rome, Papal States

Italian

Architecture, linguistics, poetry

Tempio Malatestiano, Palazzo Rucellai, Santa Maria Novella, Basilica of Sant'Andrea

Italian Renaissance

He is often considered primarily an architect. However, as James Beck has observed,[3] "to single out one of Leon Battista's 'fields' over others as somehow functionally independent and self-sufficient is of no help at all to any effort to characterize Alberti's extensive explorations in the fine arts". Although Alberti is known mostly as an artist, he was also a mathematician and made significant contributions to that field.[4] Among the most famous buildings he designed are the churches of San Sebastiano (1460) and Sant’Andrea (1472), both in Mantua.[5]


Alberti's life was told in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.

Mantua, (begun 1458)[19] the unfinished façade of which has promoted much speculation as to Alberti's intention [10]

San Sebastiano

Sepolcro Rucellai in , 1467)[19]

San Pancrazio

The Tribune for , Florence (1470, completed with alterations, 1477)[19]

Santissima Annunziata

Painting[edit]

Giorgio Vasari, who argued that historical progress in art reached its peak in Michelangelo, emphasized Alberti's scholarly achievements, not his artistic talents: "He spent his time finding out about the world and studying the proportions of antiquities; but above all, following his natural genius, he concentrated on writing rather than on applied work."[11] In On Painting, Alberti uses the expression "We Painters", but as a painter, or sculptor, he was a dilettante. "In painting Alberti achieved nothing of any great importance or beauty", wrote Vasari.[11] "The very few paintings of his that are extant are far from perfect, but this is not surprising since he devoted himself more to his studies than to draughtsmanship." Jacob Burckhardt portrayed Alberti in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy as a truly universal genius. "And Leonardo Da Vinci was to Alberti as the finisher to the beginner, as the master to the dilettante. Would only that Vasari's work were here supplemented by a description like that of Alberti! The colossal outlines of Leonardo's nature can never be more than dimly and distantly conceived."[9]


Alberti is said to appear in Mantegna's great frescoes in the Camera degli Sposi, as the older man dressed in dark red clothes, who whispers in the ear of Ludovico Gonzaga, the ruler of Mantua.[20] In Alberti's self-portrait, a large plaquette, he is clothed as a Roman. To the left of his profile is a winged eye. On the reverse side is the question, Quid tum? (what then), taken from Virgil's Eclogues: "So what, if Amyntas is dark? (quid tum si fuscus Amyntas?) Violets are black, and hyacinths are black."[21]

Alberti was the creator of a theory called "historia". In his treatise (1435) he explains the theory of the accumulation of people, animals, and buildings, which create harmony amongst each other, and "hold the eye of the learned and unlearned spectator for a long while with a certain sense of pleasure and emotion". De pictura ("On Painting") contained the first scientific study of perspective. An Italian translation of De pictura (Della pittura) was published in 1436, one year after the original Latin version and addressed Filippo Brunelleschi in the preface. The Latin version had been dedicated to Alberti's humanist patron, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga of Mantua. He also wrote works on sculpture, De statua.

De pictura

Alberti used his artistic treatises to propound a new humanistic theory of art. He drew on his contacts with early Quattrocento artists such as Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Ghiberti to provide a practical handbook for the renaissance artist.

Alberti wrote an influential work on architecture, , which by the sixteenth century had been translated into Italian (by Cosimo Bartoli), French, Spanish, and English. An English translation was by Giacomo Leoni in the early eighteenth century. Newer translations are now available.

De re aedificatoria

Whilst Alberti's treatises on painting and architecture have been hailed as the founding texts of a new form of art, breaking from the Gothic past, it is impossible to know the extent of their practical impact during his lifetime. His praise of the Calumny of Apelles led to several attempts to emulate it, including paintings by Botticelli and Signorelli. His stylistic ideals have been put into practice in the works of , Piero della Francesca, and Fra Angelico. But how far Alberti was responsible for these innovations and how far he was simply articulating the trends of the artistic movement, with which his practical experience had made him familiar, is impossible to ascertain.

Mantegna

He was so a skilled composer of verse: a comedy he wrote when twenty years old, entitled Philodoxius, would later deceive the younger Aldus Manutius, who edited and published it as the genuine work of 'Lepidus Comicus'.

Latin

Alberti made a variety of contributions to several fields:

, 1435. On Painting, in English, De Pictura, in Latin, On Painting. Penguin Classics. 1972. ISBN 978-0-14-043331-9.; Della Pittura, in Italian (1804 [1434]).

De Pictura

Momus, Latin text and English translation, 2003  0-674-00754-9

ISBN

De re aedificatoria (1452, Ten Books on Architecture). Alberti, Leon Battista. De re aedificatoria. On the art of building in ten books. (translated by Joseph Rykwert, Robert Tavernor and Neil Leach). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988.  0-262-51060-X. ISBN 978-0-262-51060-8. Latin, French and Italian editions Archived 2016-03-05 at the Wayback Machine and in English translation.

ISBN

A Treatise on Ciphers (1467), trans. A. Zaccagnini. Foreword by David Kahn, Galimberti, Torino 1997.

De Cifris

Della tranquillitá dell'animo. 1441.

"Leon Battista Alberti. On Painting. A New Translation and Critical Edition", Edited and Translated by , Cambridge University Press, New York, May 2011, ISBN 978-1-107-00062-9, (books.google.de Archived 2023-07-23 at the Wayback Machine)

Rocco Sinisgalli

I libri della famiglia, Italian edition

[25]

"Dinner pieces". A Translation of the Intercenales by David Marsh. Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, Binghamton 1987.

"Descriptio urbis Romae. Leon Battista Alberti's Delineation of the city of Rome". Peter Hicks, Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State university 2007.

Leon Battista Alberti is a major character in 's three-part television film The Age of the Medici (1973), with the third and final part, Leon Battista Alberti: Humanism, centering on him, his works (such as Santa Maria Novella), and his thought. He is played by Italian actor Virginio Gazzolo.[26]

Roberto Rossellini

Mentioned in the 1994 film or Army Intelligence starring Danny DeVito.

Renaissance Man

Mentioned in the 2004 book by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason

The Rule of Four

F. Canali e V. C. Galati, V. Galati, Leon Battista Alberti a Napoli e nei baronati del Regno aragonese. Cultura, Archeologia, Architettura e città. Parte Prima, StrStudi, Consulenze, Autopsie antiquarie e Giudizi tecnici (in Apulia, Campania, Latium, Lucania, Marsica, Picenum e Sicilia), in Memorabilia tra natura e geometria. Il Culto del Passato dalla Inventio alla Reinterpretazione, cura di F. Canali «Bollettino della Società di Studi Fiorentini», 30-31, 2021-2022, pp. 426-483.

F. Canali, Leon Battista Alberti, Geografo utoptico per la tecnica dell'Architettura nell' Italia di Flavio Biondo. in Memorabilia tra natura e geometria. Il Culto del Passato dalla Inventio alla Reinterpretazione, cura di F. Canali «Bollettino della Società di Studi Fiorentini», 30-31, 2021-2022, pp. 314-425.

[1] Archived 2022-04-18 at the Wayback Machine Magda Saura, "Building codes in the architectural treatise De re aedificatoria,"


[2] Archived 2022-04-18 at the Wayback Machine Third International Congress on Construction History, Cottbus, May 2009.


[3] Archived 2022-04-18 at the Wayback Machine hdl:2117/14252

Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine

Albertian Bibliography on line

Houghton Library, Harvard University.

MS Typ 422.2. Alberti, Leon Battista, 1404–1472. Ex ludis rerum mathematicarum : manuscript, [14--].

Archived 2018-12-17 at the Wayback Machine

Palladio's Literary Predecessors

Archived 2021-08-30 at the Wayback Machine, Caspar Pearson, Berfrois Archived 2011-07-17 at the Wayback Machine, September 26, 2011

"Learning from the City-States? Leon Battista Alberti and the London Riots"

[4]

De pictura/Della pittura