Leon Battista Alberti: The Original "Uomo Universale"

"Man is a mortal but happy god because he combines capacity for virtuous action with rational understanding." Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)

When we think about the Italian Renaissance the names of some of the most important and influential figures in world history fill our imagination. Think Petrarch, Donatello, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Massacio, Guicciardini, Macchiavelli, Caravaggio, Rafael, Botticelli and Michaelangelo.

Wondering where da Vinci is on that ridiculously abbreviated list? Wait and fret no more. The humanism of the Renaissance produced two of the most complex and sublime minds in history. One was obviously Leonardo da Vinci and the other was architect Leon Battista Alberti. Together they formed the nucleus of polymathic genius. Through the humanist outlook, they created and cultivated the cult of the genius.

Indeed of the two Alberti is the least known. Harry Hearder put it this way, "it is perhaps a pity that several of his portraits are less well known to the general public...but his notebooks also reveal that he was an engineer, anatomist and botanist. He was a scientist and technologist before society was ready to put his ideas into practice." It was left to da Vinci to do this.

According to scholar and historian Jakob Burckhardt, Alberti excelled in many areas. Said Burckhardt, "Of his various gymnastic feats (he was also a skilled horseman by the way) and exercises we read with astonishment how. with his feet together, he could spring over a man's head" and "He learned music without a master and yet his compositions were admired by professional judges. Under the pressure of poverty, he studied both civil and canonical law for many years, till exhaustion brought on a severe illness."

Burckhardt was not above exaggerations however he did paint - excuse the pun here my friends - a wonderful fresco of Alberti. His description of Alberti leapt into the realm of a demi-god. As if Alberti's practical achievements weren't enough he is said to have predicted the fate of Florence and deaths of many popes!

And just what kept Alberti up at night? For starters, he changed the role of the artist graduating him from mere craftsmen status to one of a philosopher - or at least to one where intellectual skills were necessary. By adding scientific perspective to art he could equate its importance with philosophy and literature.

As if this wasn't enough, Alberti -who was also commissioned to reconstruct Rome by Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) - was a poet and art theorist as well as dedicated to physics and mathematics, Latin, painting and perspective. Above all, nature is the one subject that moved him to serene inner-peace and it is said that when ill a walk with nature would heal him.

Though he left an indelible mark on art, Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), who argued that historical progress in art reached its peak with Michelangelo, emphasized Alberti's achievements were scholarly and not necessarily artistic: "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." (from Lives of the Artists).

Alberti was no different than most of the observational gifted people that marked the age. He was empirical (though not quite as thorough as da Vinci.) This respectful treatment (oh how we have lost this lost art and scientific form!) of facts helped him to dissect inquisitively artists, scholars and artisans.

His Breathtaking scope of his abilities led to Alberti writing the revolutionary On Painting:

"Then in 1457, the year when the German Johann Gutenberg discovered his very useful method for printing books, Alberti similarly discovered a way of tracing natural perspectives and effecting the diminution of figures, as well as a method of reproducing small objects on a large scale; these were very ingenious and fascinating discoveries, of great value for the purposes of art." De Pictura 1435 (Della Pittura in Italian).

The first publication discussing architecture during the Renaissance was Alberti's De re aedificatoria (1452, Ten Books on Architecture), a theoretical masterpeice patterned after the De architecture by the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius (46-30 B.C.).

Another less known but equally important in my opinion was I Libri della famiglia. A book that further reflected and cemented his uomo universale sensibilities as he considered subjects like marriage, education, household management and finance as well as the concept of money.

Among Alberti's smaller studies were a treatise in cryptography, De componendis cifris. Alongside Florentine cosmographer Paolo Toscanelli they collaborated in astronomy - a close science to geography at that time. Not surprisingly he produced a small work on geography, Descriptio urbis Romae (the Panorama of the City of Rome).

What does all this mean for us today? Well, for starters, let us speculate that if he were alive today (along with Newton, Bacon, Gallileo and Dante) he would probably be appalled as well as saddened by the way we treat facts in contemporary society. It may very well remind him of a period in history when alchemy and other pseudo-sciences ruled the earth from the fall of Rome to the birth of Petrarch. In many ways our jealous partisanship and cynical ignorance - which has led to the proliferation of profiteers who swindle an unsuspecting populace- resembles a modern Dark Age.

Add to this list superficial columnists, shallow activist filmmakers, manufactured pop stars, corporate art, unions who retard artistic expression and a general apathy and indifference to art as well as the death of the concept of the civil citizen as further evidence regarding our slight set back.

On the other hand, man has done well for himself since the legacy of the Renaissance. Since that time, we have evolved into a being that humanists expected us to be. Design remains vibrant in many art forms be it in architecture or manufacturing.

In many ways, the latest stage of this evolution left behind by the Ancients and Renaissance humanists lies with the United States. Alberti would not approve of much of what goes on in the U.S. but he would also recognize (and cherish) that it is within its borders men of genius have any chance of expressing themselves free of tyranny.

"Men can do all things if they will."

Sources considered:

www.kirjasto.sci.fi/alberti.htm
Sprezzatura, D'Epiro and Pinkowish (1997)
The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, Rice (1970)
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Burckhardt (1855)
Italy: A Short History, Hearder (1990)
A Traveller's History of Italy, Lintner (1995)

Image #2:
www.acmi.net.au