Leon Battista Alberti

Italian scholar, writer, and architect

• Born: February 14, 1404
• Birthplace: Genoa (now in Italy)
• Died: April 1, 1472
• Place of death: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)

Alberti is identified by Renaissance historians as an archetype of the universal individual. He established a leading reputation as a theorist and practitioner of the visual arts, notably in the field of architecture. As a Humanist, he was the author of numerous moral dialogues.

Early Life

Leon Battista Alberti (LEE-on bah-TEES-tah ahl-BEHR-tee) was born to the prominent Alberti family, who were textile merchants and bankers. In Florence, they were associated with the Popular Party. Their decline began with the exile of Leon Battista’s grandfather Benedetto, who left Florence with his son Lorenzo in 1387. Leon Battista was born in Genoa, the second natural son of Lorenzo and Bianca Fieschi, widow of a prominent Genoese family. On his mother’s death from the plague in 1406, Lorenzo moved to Venice, where he joined another brother, Ricciardo, in trade, shortly thereafter marrying a Florentine woman in 1408.

Leon Battista and his brother Carlo received the best Humanist education available. At Gasparino, Barzizza’s academy in Padua, he studied with many who were to become major scholars in the world of Renaissance learning, such as Panormita and Francesco Filelfo. In 1421, Alberti went to Bologna, where he deepened his knowledge of Greek and Latin literature and began his studies of mathematics. Following the death of his father in 1421 and his uncle Ricciardo a year later, the brothers were deprived of their legitimate inheritance by the machinations of their cousins, Ricciardo’s sons. A combination of grief and academic pressure led to a serious deterioration of Leon Battista’s health, in particular his eyesight. During his recuperation, he turned from the study of ancient texts to that of mathematics, an interest that profoundly affected his future researches.

Alberti’s friendship in Bologna with Tommaso Parentucelli da Sarzana the future Pope Nicholas V led to an appointment as secretary to a cardinal of Bologna. In 1428, the Florentine ban on the Albertis was lifted. It is most likely that Leon Battista made a brief visit to the city of his father that year, or early in 1429. These years coincide with the climax of the struggle between the Albizzi faction and the Popular Party, resulting in the eventual consolidation in Florence of Medici power under Cosimo I de’ Medici: Historically the Albertis had been closely allied to the Medicis.

Life’s Work

As a papal secretary in the service of Eugenius IV , Alberti followed the pope to Florence, where he had been invited on the expulsion of the Papacy from Rome. Here he came into contact with all the major personalities responsible for the explosion of the new art and architecture of the Renaissance. In Florence, he established strong ties of friendship with the sculptor Donatello and the architects Filippo Brunelleschi, who had completed the dome of the cathedral; Michelozzo, who was to design the Palazzo Medici; and Lorenzo Ghiberti, who was working on the doors of the baptistery. The first fruits of this experience are the De pictura (1435; Of Painting, 1726) and De statua (possibly pre-1435; Of Sculpture, 1726), in both of which Alberti displays the fundamental principles of Renaissance art, in particular the relationship between mathematics and composition, the consequent rules of perspective, and the use of nature as a model. Alberti wrote both Latin and Italian versions of these treatises.

While the majority of his moral dialogues are in Latin, Alberti also turned to the vernacular in a conscious attempt to reach a wider audience and to restore to Tuscan the literary prestige it had enjoyed in the previous century as the result of the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio. Theogenius (c. 1440) and Della tranquillità dell’ anima (c. 1442; of peace of mind) mark moments of deep reflection in Alberti’s career: an internal debate on the relative merits of the active and contemplative life. The high point of these years came earlier, with the completion of the first three books of Alberti’s most popular work, Della famiglia (1434; The Family in Renaissance Florence, 1969). In dialogue form, he details the moral basis of the family and its role in civic life, offering to the coming generation, in spite of the reverses he himself suffered at the hands of certain relatives, the example of the contributions made by their ancestors to the commercial expansion and intellectual vigor of Renaissance Florence.

Alberti’s career as an architect was launched in Ferrara in 1442, when he was asked to judge the designs for an equestrian statue in honor of Nicolò d’Este. Alberti designed the minitriumphal arch for the statue’s base. With the elevation of Parentucelli to the Papacy as Nicholas V, Alberti was named the pope’s principal architectural adviser: the one he depended on more than any other in an ambitious program of restoration, street widening, and building projects designed to return to Rome the dignity it deserved as the seat of the Catholic Church. The years that followed were to be the most productive of his career, and the achievements recorded between 1450 and 1470 were to give him his greatest satisfaction and ensure Alberti enduring fame. The buildings completed and designed were all the fruit of an experience that had ripened in the light of extensive theoretical meditation. Alberti’s principles of architecture are detailed in the ten volumes of De re aedificatoria (1452; The Architecture of Leon Battista Alberti in Ten Books, 1726), dedicated to his patron Nicholas V. In it, Alberti acknowledges the contribution of the Roman theorist Vetruvius. His intention was to take the principles of harmony and proportion and apply them to the aesthetic and practical requirements of his own age.

Passing from theory to practice, he accepted a commission from Sigismondo Malatesta (1450) to transform the Gothic Church of San Francesco into the Tempio Malatestano, with its bold classical façade; divided into three triumphal arches. Also around 1450, he was called by the merchant Giovanni Rucellai to redesign the facade of his family’s palazzo in Florence that, with its elegant pillars and flat beveled masonry, makes the building rather more inviting than the more fortresslike structures such as the Palazzo Medici-Ricciardi.

During the reign of Pius II , one of the foremost Renaissance Humanists, Alberti accepted the invitation of Ludovico Gonzaga of Mantua to build the Church of San Sebastiano in that city. The same princely patron gave Alberti his final commission, to design the Church of Sant’ Andrea in Mantua. The latter was only completed in the eighteenth century, following modified Albertian concepts. He did live to see the completion of a major project: the façade of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, again commissioned by his patron Rucellai. Here the addition of classical forms harmonizes with existing Gothic elements of the basilica, and the use of the characteristic black-and-white marble blends Santa Maria Novella with other major Florentine churches, including Santa Maria del Fiore. Alberti, who served popes and princes, also remained in touch with his allies the Medicis; in the tradition of the scholar advising civic leaders, he dedicated a small treatise on rhetoric (Trivia senatoria , c. 1460) to Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was still in his teens. Alberti died in Rome in April, 1472.

Significance

Alberti’s writings in Italian, both on art and on social behavior, explore all the major themes of Renaissance Humanism. Scholars and editors of his works have asserted that he shaped and defined this movement in the history of ideas and that the Renaissance would not have made the intellectual advances it did without his contributions and prodding.

In the introduction to The Family in Renaissance Florence, he expounds on the themes of virtue and fortune that so exercised the speculative curiosity of fifteenth century thinkers. In the decline of glory of his own family, he sees a parallel with the rise and fall of states. Against the thesis of inevitability and the stoic acceptance of a fate governing human affairs, Alberti juxtaposes the Renaissance idea of free will that allows individuals to shape an independent life for themselves in defiance of even the direst circumstances. This is what he means by virtue, which must never allow fortune to serve as an alibi for failure or incompetence. Virtue is also dedicated hard work and the determination to cultivate all the seeds of natural talents and curiosity with which one is endowed. The proclamation of these ideals makes Alberti a principal spokesperson of the spirit of the active life that animates the mercantile ethic of civic Humanism in the first half of Quattrocento Florence. Humans were born, he says, to be useful to other humans.

While the impact of Alberti the moralist deserves emphasis, his dominant role as art theorist and architectural mentor is his most enduring achievement. Architecture could be taken as a metaphor for the highest ideals of Renaissance culture, for it involves the most detailed knowledge of an infinite variety of activities, skills, and materials that must ultimately be synthesized into a harmonious whole. Granted his major achievements in so many fields, it is amazing to observe that Alberti’s final significance was nearly overlooked. His original insights into art theory had been so integrated into practice and elaborated on by Leonardo da Vinci and others that the originator of the ideas had been largely forgotten.

Bibliography

Alberti, Leon Battista. The Family in Renaissance Florence. Translated by Renee Neu Watkins. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1969. This modern translation includes a good introduction and bibliography of writings on civic Humanism in English.

Gadol, Joan. Leon Battista Alberti: Universal Man of the Early Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. A very useful study detailing Alberti’s contributions to the theory and practice of art and the development of architecture in the fifteenth century. Although mostly directed to his work in the visual arts (with reference to optics and perspective), the book places its subject firmly in the context of Humanism. The first chapter is biographical and includes a critical survey of views on Alberti’s ultimate significance.

Garin, Eugenio. Italian Humanism: Philosophy and Civic Life in the Renaissance. Translated by Peter Munz. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. This extremely lucid intellectual history of Renaissance Humanism includes some indispensable pages on Alberti in chapter 2 on the subject of civic life. Garin presents him as a major representative of the spirit of negotium (the active life) and thus a key figure in the intellectual life of the first half of the Quattrocento.

Grafton, Anthony. Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance. New York: Harvard University Press, 2002. An impressive attempt to do justice to the many facets and multidisciplinary accomplishments of Alberti, including his critical and creative writings, painting, architecture, and even his athletic prowess. Combines cultural history with personal biography and psychological insight. Includes bibliography, illustrations, index.

Grayson, Cecil. “The Humanism of Alberti.” Italian Studies 12 (1957): 37-56. An essential synopsis of Alberti’s thought and moral imperatives by the writer’s most distinguished commentator and the major editor of his works. Grayson succinctly relates Alberti’s thought to his family’s commercial activity and the intellectual atmosphere of fifteenth century Florence.

Harries, Karsten. Infinity and Perspective. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001. This controversial philosophical text reviews the history of theories of perspective in an attempt to argue in favor of objective truth. Includes important discussion of Alberti’s theory of perspective and the relationship between art, science, and philosophy in the Renaissance. Includes illustrations, index, bibliographic references.

Sparti, Barbara. “Humanism and the Arts: Parallels Between Alberti’s On Painting and Guglielmo Ebreo’s On Dancing.” In Art and Music in the Early Modern Period: Essays in Honor of Franca Trinchieri Camiz, edited by Katherine A. McIver. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003. Essay detailing the importance of Humanism to Alberti’s theories of painting, as well as comparing Alberti’s brand of Humanism to that of Ebreo. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Tavernor, Robert. On Alberti and the Art of Building. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998. In-depth study of each of Alberti’s architectural projects, analyzing his intentions and artistry as a master builder. Attempts to resolve many points of dispute resulting from the unfinished nature of many of Alberti’s projects, as well as their subsequent modification by others. Includes illustrations, index, references, and a bibliography of Alberti’s writings.