4.635
History of Renaissance Architecture
David Friedman

Leone Battista Alberti (1404 - 1472) humanist (that is, student of ancient letters, the culture and the art of antiquity), theoretician of the arts, architect. From a Florentine patrician family, the natural child of father in exile in Genova. Alberti was educated at the school of the humanist Gaspare Barzizza in Padua and studied cannon law at the University of Bologna, where he took his degree in 1428. From 1432 until 1464 he held a position as apostolic abbreviator in the papal curia.

Some written works:
de Pictura (On Painting, 1435, italian version with preface to Brunelleschi et. al. 1436)
della Famiglia (On the Family 1433), Descriptio Urbis
Romae (in which he describes a geometric survey of the city of Rome, 1443-51)
Momus(before 1450, a satirical text that portrays the god Jupiteris an incompetent, the only worthy man is a Franciscan mendicant, and the architect is commissioned to redesign the world)
de re aedificatoria (dedicated to Nicholas V 1452, first printed edition
1485.)

Alberti is the author of the first Italian grammar (1442?), books on cryptography, agriculture, the duties of a bishop, plays, moral and ethical treatises, philosophical dialogues and an autobiography. He was also the sponsor of competition in vernacular composition, at Florence, with Piero de' Medici, 1441.


Alberti goes to Florence for the first time in 1428 and was there sporadically in the period 1434-43 and in 1450's (but says, bitterly, of the city of the family that had deprived him of his inheritance " I went rarely and stayed for short periods of time) He was in Rome regularly from 1431 in papal court of Eugenius IV, Nicholas V, and Pius II. Regular vistor to Mantua from 1459. As a priest he has a benefice at San Martino a San Gangalandi, near Florence, where toward the end of his life, he initiates project to rebuild the apse of the church.

S. Francesco, Rimini. 1450 inscription, work to 1454.

Facade of the Palazzo Rucellai, Florence, 1455 or 1461.

Facade of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, 1456, inscription 1470, design

Images for Comparison: Alberti's Bath Design:

S. Miniato al Monte in Florence 1013-63:

Deus Rediculus on the via Cappaulla outside Rome and Notre Dame Cathedral at Reims:

The Pantheon in Rome c. 126 AD:

The Colosseum in Rome c. 80 AD:

The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre for the Rucellai at San Pancrazio, Florence. 1462-67.
(Badia Fiesolana, 1456)
(Pitti palace begun 1458)
(Pienza, Feb. 1459 Alberti visits w. Pius II, Aug. 1462 church inaugurated) Pienza


Title: Allegory of Good & Bad Government.
Artist: Lorenzetti, Ambrogio
Date: 1338-40
Location: Fresco in Siena, Palazzo Publico


Title: Ideal City
Artist: di Giogio, Francesco
Date: 15th Centuary
Location: Urbino, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche


Title: Cathedral, ext. facade
Artist: B. Rossellino
Date: 1462
Location: Italy, Pienza


Title: Pienza, plan of city, detail of central square
Location: Italy, Pienza


Title: Pienza, Cathedral and Picolomini Palace
Location: Italy, Pienza

San Sebastiano, Mantua 1460
S. Andrea, Mantua 1470

<-- For Comparison Basilica of Maxentius & Constantine in Rome