Leon Battista Alberti
Biography of Early Italian Renaissance
Architect, Painter, Sculptor, Writer.
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Leon Battista Alberti |
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Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72)This Italian architect, painter, sculptor, diplomat and writer was the most important art-theorist of the Early Renaissance. His importance in the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture is due to his three influential treatises: De Sculptura and Della Pittura (1435) and De Re Aedificatoria (1452) which greatly enhanced Renaissance art of the period. Probably born at Genoa, he was the illegitimate son of the Florentine Lorenzo Alberti, who had been exiled in 1401. After a humanist education under Gasparino da Barzizza (1359-1431) at Padua, he studied law at the University of Bologna, entered minor orders, and became a papal civil servant. He remained in papal service for most of his life; although he lived principally in Rome, his duties took him to a number of Italian cities and possibly as far afield as the Netherlands. |
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Between 1434 and 1436 he was in Florence (which he seems to have regarded as his home, despite his cosmopolitan life) and it is during this period that his interest in the visual arts first becomes apparent. The undated treatise De Sculptura (On Sculpture) was probably his first essay in this field. In it, Alberti recommends the sculptor to be guided both by an observation of nature and by academic study, entailing a knowledge of proportional theory. It also contains the first known definition of sculpture as an additive process, as in clay modeling, or a subtractive one, as in carving. His better-known and more ambitious Della Pittura (On Painting) was written in Latin in 1435 and translated into Italian the following year. Divided into three books, it deals with the technicalities of "one-point" linear perspective, the theory of human proportions, composition, and the use of colour in painting, and considers the nature of beauty and art as well as the behavior appropriate to an artist. When compared with earlier works, Della Pittura emerges as a fundamentally new departure: the first authoritative treatise on Early Renaissance painting. Although partly a humanist utopia, replete with numerous Classical references, the treatise was also a working handbook. As Alberti's dedication to Filippo
Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and his references to Tommaso
Masaccio (1401-1428), Donatello (1386-1466),
Luca delia Robbia, and Lorenzo Ghiberti
(1378-1455) imply, the book was a codification of current Florentine artistic
practice. In certain respects, particularly in his observations on aerial
perspective, Alberti's theory went further and was actually in advance
of contemporary practice. His request, at the beginning of Book One, that
he be judged as a painter rather than as a mathematician, is the only
surviving evidence that Alberti himself painted. Although no surviving
works by his hand have been identified, there seems to be little reason
to doubt this claim. By this time Alberti appears to have been employed as a papal consultant on urban planning and the conservation of Classical remains. His first known architectural commission was undertaken about 1450 for Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini. This prince, who was as steeped in Classical culture as Alberti himself, wished to convert the Gothic church of S.Francesco in Rimini into a splendid mausoleum for himself and his court. Faced with this unprepossessing task, Alberti's solution was both ingenious and simple. Retaining the interior with minor decorative modifications, he enclosed the old fabric within an architectural shell. The facade was recast as a temple front incorporating a triumphal facade motif, and the sides were masked with a massive series of piers, framing deep, round-head niches. The walls were taken up to a sufficient height to conceal the church within. It seems that the crossing was to have been crowned with a huge semi-circular dome, though this was never built. Despite its incomplete state, the church stands as an austere evocation of Roman Antiquity, such as had never before been seen in the quattrocento. |
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Shortly afterwards, Alberti was called upon to complete the facade of the church of S. Maria Novella in Florence (pictured above left). Incorporating the extant Gothic arcading of the lower story, Alberti monumentalized the facade with the addition of a great arched central doorway, and unified it with side pilasters and a high attic zone. As at Rimini, the end result is a triumphal arch motif. In the upper story, he retained the old circular window and surrounded it with a visually dominating square element. Decorated with pilasters and surmounted by a pediment, this formed an applied temple front. The difference in height between this storey and the aisles was effectively masked by a pair of great volutes. At S.Maria Novella, Alberti had formulated a lucidly structured Classical facade, working within the traditional Tuscan formal repertoire dictated by the existing building. The genius of his architectural design is that it appears as a convincing aesthetic whole and in no way as a compromise. Alberti's last two church designs were for new buildings, commissioned by Ludovico Gonzaga of Mantua. The first, S.Sebastiano, was begun in 1460 but never properly completed. It was conceived as a central cube spanned by an enormous domical vault, contained within a Greek cross. Three arms ended in apses, the fourth led out to a pedimented facade with a broken entablature. The main story was elevated upon a crypt, giving a strange emphasis to the facade. This would probably have been masked by a mighty stairway, firmly anchoring the facade to street level, but it was never built. The second church S.Andrea, was begun in
1470 and completed according to Alberti's plans after his death. On a
Latin cross plan, the church was enclosed with a great coffered barrel
vault. This coffering was echoed in the chapels - that lined the nave,
in the entrance porch that serves as a centerpiece to the facade, and
in the remarkable window niche that stands high above the majestic main
pediment and its giant order. Both churches were of a very unconventional
design, although they reveal a deliberate application of proportional
theory, and the use of a wide range of antique sources, closely related
to the theories in De Re Aedificatiora. In addition, he also practised as a sculptor and painter. No pictures by him have survived, but two bronze plaques (self-portraits) are attributed to him. One is in the Louvre, the other in the National Gallery Washington DC. They are dated to the mid 1430s. In his architectural designs, and in the literary explanation of his aims and ideas, Alberti provided a secure basis for the subsequent development of the classical style in European architecture. When his other literary works, in particular his treatises on sculpture and painting, are added to this achievement, his contribution to Renaissance culture is justifiably immense. |
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