ALBERTI, LEON BATTISTA

Alberti, Leon Battista: translation

(1404-1472)

   After Filippo Brunelleschi's death in 1446, Alberti became the leading architect of the Renaissance. He was born into a noble family that had been exiled from Florence in 1402 and was educated in the universities of Padua and Bologna, where he studied law. He is known to have traveled extensively, visiting different cities in Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries. In 1432, Alberti became an apostolic abbreviator at the Vatican, which gave him the opportunity to study the ancient ruins of Rome. In 1446, his friend Tommaso Parentucelli ascended the papal throne as Nicholas V and appointed the architect advisor on papal restoration projects. Alberti was not only an architect but also a writer. He contributed treatises on architecture, painting, sculpture, poems, comedies, the family, and even horses. His De re aedificatoria provides the earliest proper account of the classical architectural orders of the Renaissance era. His treatise on painting disseminated the one-point linear perspective technique, thought to have been developed by Brunelleschi. Alberti was in fact such an admirer of Brunelleschi that he dedicated the treatise to him. He also built upon the architectural principles of order, balance, and symmetry established by his predecessor to create some of the most influential buildings of the Renaissance. In the jubilee year of 1450, Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, was in Rome to participate in the celebrations, and there he met Alberti.In Rimini, the architect Matteo de' Pasti was working on the Tempio Malatestiano, a shrine meant to commemorate Sigismondo's deeds and serve as his funerary chapel. Alberti criticized Pasti's design, so Malatesta invited him to provide plans for a new exterior. These he provided and Pasti was forced to carry out the work based on Alberti's design. The project was halted in 1461 when Sigismondo had a fall-out with the pope that resulted in his public excommunication. In Florence, Alberti provided the façade for the Church of Santa Maria Novella in c. 1456-1470. Financed by Giovanni Rucellai, Alberti here applied the same geometric and mathematical principles that Brunelleschi had used. His design became the prototype for the façade of Il Gesù (1568-1584) in Rome, the first Baroque church built. Giovanni also commissioned from Alberti the Palazzo Rucellai (beg. c. 1453) for use as his family residence. Based on Michelozzo's design for the Palazzo Medici, the building uses the Colosseum principle, with orders that change at each level and become lighter and more feminine as the building ascends — the first domestic structure of the Renaissance to employ this feature. In 1460, Alberti began work on the Church of San Sebastiano, Mantua, for Duke Ludovico Gonzaga, a building altered in the early 20th century to serve as a war memorial. Alberti conceived the original structure as a Greek cross plan, the first of its kind from the Renaissance, with an upper and lower church. In 1470, he also began work on the Church of Sant' Andrea, Mantua, also for the Gonzaga duke, as repository for the relic of the holy blood of Christ brought by St. Longinus to the city. The theoretical treatises Alberti wrote, coupled with his humanistic approach to building, raised the field of architecture to a scientific level. With this, Alberti paved the way for 16th-century masters, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who expended great effort to elevate the status of art from manual labor to liberal art and that of the artist from craftsman to divinely inspired creator.

ALBERTI, Leon Battista: translation

(1404-1472)

   Leon Battista Alberti, the leading theorist in Renaissance Italy, was born into a noble Florentine family expelled to Venice. It was in Padua that Alberti first studied classical humanism, and in Bologna that he received a law degree in 1428. Able to return to Florence the following year, he began his career as an author, writing books on upper-middle-class family life, painting, sculpture, and architecture. His architectural treatise, finished in 1452 and titled De re aedificatura, is dedicated to his patron in Rome, Pope Nicholas V. This treatise is the first since antiquity and was modeled on the Roman treatise by Vitruvius.Like Vitruvius, Alberti defined ideal architecture as that which demonstrates strength, utility, and beauty. He also updated Vitruvius's classical orders by canonizing the Composite order of columns, which Vitruvius considered merely a late variant of the Corinthian. Alberti's treatise is less of a practical manual, however, and more of a theoretical discussion of the aesthetics of classical architecture, considered the ideal style in the Renaissance.

   Alberti put his ideals into practice with his Tempio Malatestiano, built in the 1450s as a funerary church for the ruler of Rimini, Sigismondo Malatesta. Despite the fact that it lacks its originally planned dome over the crossing of the nave, this stone building recalls a classical temple in its façade, which is made to recall the design of a Roman triumphal arch, and in its basilica interior, which has piers lightly carved with Roman motifs. His later church of Sant'Andrea in Mantua, from 1472, is Alberti's most fully formed classical building. Here, a colossal arch rises up over the central door, flanked by side wings with separate entrances. Thus, the façade is divided into three parts separated by smooth colossal Corinthian pilasters that rise up to the entablature, creating an elevated porch entrance into the church. The façade is further divided into three parts vertically, by the placement of two arches over each side entrance to create three stories. Finally, a frieze separates the lower levels from the triangular pediment that caps the sloping, unfinished roofline. Entering the building under the coffered portico, the visitor immediately recognizes that the interior of the church matches the exterior in height, proportion, and design. The vast coffered barrel vault provides an expansive Latin-cross plan, with a nave flanked by side aisles. It was the Latin-cross church plan that Alberti used here, which was the most practical in organization and size. Thus, with these churches one can see how Alberti sought to infuse a rational approach to his ideal architecture by providing not only overt classical references but also a visual harmony and order that suited Renaissance aesthetics.

Alberti, Leon Battista: translation

(1404-1472)

   Italian humanist and architect, unusual in that he bridged the social gap between the educated humanist and the practicing artist. Born at Genoa as the illegitimate son of an exiled Florentine banker, he studied law at Bologna but was more interested in classical studies. His humanistic writings included a Latin comedy and a collection of original dialogues and essays on moral issues, the Intercenales /Dinner Pieces. He also produced two vernacular works on love that became very popular in his own lifetime, and a treatise on domestic life, Delia famiglia / On the Family, that discussed housekeeping, estate management, marriage, and child-rearing.Alberti's literary reputation and his excellent Latin style won him employment at the papal curia. In 1432 he accompanied the curia to Florence. There he met the leading Florentine humanists and painters. Although his upbringing in northern Italy made the Tuscan literary language alien to him, he produced the first grammar of literary Italian, Grammatica della lingua toscana / Grammar of the Tuscan Language.

   Alberti was best known in later times for his De re aedificatoria / On the Art of Building (1452), a Latin treatise on the theory and practice of architecture based on the Roman architect Vitruvius. He also wrote a treatise on sculpture and the influential Elementa picturae / The Elements of Painting (1435), which contains a clear description of the principles of single-point (linear) perspective introduced into Italian art by the sculptor Donatello and the painter Masaccio. He wrote many other books, including philosophical treatises and a pioneering Latin treatise on cryptography. Alberti also became a successful architect, admired for his design of the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence and the church of S. Andrea at Mantua and for remodelling the exterior of the church of S. Francesco at Rimini in the classical style.