Leon Battista Alberti

“ Leo Battista Alberti, a scion of the noble Florentine house of that name, born during the exile of his parents, and educated in the Venetian territory, was endowed by nature with aptitudes, faculties, and sensibilities so varied, as to deserve the name of universal genius. Italy in the Renaissance period was rich in natures of this sort, to whom nothing that is strange or beautiful seemed unfamiliar, and who, gifted with a kind of divination, penetrated the secrets of the world by sympathy. ”

“ In painting, Leon Batista did not perform any great work, or execute pictures of much beauty; those remaining to us from his hand, and they are but very few, do not display a high degree of perfection, seeing that he was more earnestly devoted to study than to design. ”

“ Leon Batista was well versed in arithmetic, and a very good geometrician; he wrote ten books respecting architecture in the Latin tongue, which were published in 1481; they may now be read in the Florentine language, having been translated by the Rev. Messer Cosimo Bartoli, provost of San Giovanni, in Florence. tie likewise wrote three books on painting, now translated into the Tuscan by Messer Ludovico Domenichi, and composed a dissertation on tractile [5] forces, containing rules for measuring heights. ”

“ Bocchi’s description of the palace, 4–5; Riccomanni, founder of the Acciaiuoli bank, 1; Ruberto, romantic story of, 6–9. Albany, Count of (the Pretender) , Sir Horace Mann on the, 297–299. Albany, Countess of, intrigue with Count Alfieri, 298. Albany, Duchess of, 299. Alberti, Alberto, Prior in 1294, 10; Antonio, tortured and excluded from all offices, 12; Benedetto, Machiavelli’s description of, 11; Leon Battista, description of the, by, 12–13; birth and education of, 13; inventions by, 14 ”

“ His ideal of the virtuous man is a Florence burgher, honorable but keen in business, open-216- to culture of all kinds, untainted by the cynicism that marred Cosimo de' Medici, lacking the licentious traits of the Novelle. Alberti's Padre di Famiglia might have stepped from the walls of the Riccardi Chapel or the Choir of S. Maria Novella, in his grave red lucco, with the cold and powerful features. The life praised above all others by Alberti is the life of a meditative student, withdrawn from State affairs, and corresponding with men of a like tranquil nature. ”

“ ALBERTI, LEONE BATTISTA (1404–1472) , Italian painter, poet, philosopher, musician and architect, was born in Venice on the 18th of February 1404. He was so skilled in Latin verse that a comedy he wrote in his twentieth year, entitled Philodoxius, deceived the younger Aldus, who edited and published it as the genuine work of Lepidus. In music he was reputed one of the first organists of the age. He held the appointment of canon in the metropolitan church of Florence, and thus had leisure to devote himself to his favourite art. ”

“ Rer. Ital., vol, 25, where he Avill find the source of the principal facts supplied by the many writers who treat of this distinguished man. ↑ In the life of Parri Spinelli, vol. 1. ↑ The later Florentine commentators thus explain the word “tirari,” and declare Bottari, who believes it to mean “the mode of drawing lines,” to be in error. ↑ Of the numerous writings edited, or still in manuscript, of Leon Batista, the most accurate list will be found in the biographical work of Du Fresne, appendix. ”

“ In vain, however, his physicians warned Alberti of impending peril. A man of so much stanchness, accustomed to control his nature with an iron will, is not ready to accept advice. Alberti persevered in his studies, until at last the very seat of intellect was invaded. ”

“ A characteristic incident of the year 1441 brings before us a set of men who, though obscure and devoted to the service of the common folk, exercised no slight influence over the destinies of the Italian language. After the reinstatement of the Medici, and while Alberti was resident in Florence, it occurred to him to propose the prize of a silver crown for the best poem upon Friendship, in the vulgar tongue. ”

“ The fourth explains its relations to similar communities existing in an organized society. Many passages in the essay have undoubtedly the air of truisms; but this impression of commonplaceness is removed by the strong specific character of all the illustrations. Alberti's wisdom is common to civilized humanity. His conception of life is such as only suits a Florentine, and his examples are drawn from the annals of a single family.
I have already dwelt at some length in a former volume on the most celebrated section of this treatise—the Padre di Famiglia or the Economico. ”

“ One might question whether he was better fitted for oratory or for poetry, whether his speech was the more weighty or the more polished." These great qualities Alberti -215-placed freely at the service of the unlettered laity. He is therefore the hero of that age which I have called the period of transition.
In Alberti, moreover, we study the best type of the Italian intellect as it was molded, on emergence from the middle ages, by those double influences of humanism and fine art which determined the Renaissance. ”

“ Though the subject of these essays lies beyond the scope of my work, it is impossible to pass over the dedication to Filippo Brunelleschi, which is prefixed to the Italian version of the Pittura. Alberti begins by saying that the wonder and sorrow begotten in him by reflecting on the loss of many noble arts and sciences, had led him to believe that Nature, wearied and out-worn, had no force left to generate the giant spirits of her youth. ”

“ Aiming at the general good, convinced that a living nation cannot use a dead language with dignity and self-respect, he makes the sacrifice of a scholar's pride to public utility, and has the sense to perceive that the day of erudite exclusiveness is over. No one felt more than Alberti the-187- greatness of the antique Roman race. No one was prouder of his descent from those patricians of the Commonwealth, who tamed and ruled the world. The memory of that Roman past, which turned the generation after Dante into a nation of students, glowed in Alberti's breast with more than common fervor. ”

“ That ideal of rural solitude which the Italian scholars inherited from their Roman forefathers, receives its earliest and finest treatment in this dialogue. It is not communion with nature so much as the companionship of books and the pursuit of study in a tranquil corner of the Tuscan hills, that Alberti has selected for his panegyric. [251] "The society of the illustrious dead," he says in one of the noblest passages of the essay, "can be enjoyed by me at leisure here ”

“ Alberti was a scholar and a man of high social station. Like most men of culture in Florence he had a taste for the fine arts, but, as Vasari tells us, he “applied himself not only to discover the principles and the proportions of antiquity, but also, being naturally so inclined, much more to writing than to practice.” ”

“ The semi-scientific impulse to extend man's mastery over nature, the magician's desire to penetrate secrets, which so powerfully influenced the development of Lionardo's genius, seems to have overcome the purely æsthetic instincts of Alberti, so that he became in the end neither a great artist like Raphael, nor a great discoverer like Galileo, but rather a clairvoyant to whom the miracles of nature and of art lie open. ”

“ After this exordium, he commits to Brunelleschi's care his little book on painting, quale a tuo nome feci in lingua toscana. The interest of this dedication lies not only in the mention of the five chief quattrocento artists by Alberti, and in the record of the impression first produced on him by Florence, but also in the recognition that, great as were the dead arts of antiquity, the modern arts of Italy could rival them. It is an intuition parallel to that which induced Alberti to compose the Famiglia in Italian, and proves that he could endure the blaze of humanism without blindness. ”

“ The chief point of the discourse is that no one should be idle, but that all should labor in some calling worthy of the dignity of man. [244] This seems a simple doctrine; but it is so inculcated as to make us remember the Guelf laws of Florence, whereby scioperati were declared criminals. It must not, however, be supposed that Alberti confines himself to the development of this single theme. His Deiciarchia is rather to be regarded as a treatise on the personal qualities of men to whom the conduct of a commonwealth has been by accident of birth intrusted. ”

“ The legend must have been very popular. Besides the prose version, in which the lovers are called Ippolito de' Buondelmonti and Leonora de' Bardi, we have a poem in ottava rima, where the heroine's name becomes Dianora. A Latin translation of the same novel was produced by Paolo Cortesi, with the title Hyppolyti et Deyaniræ Historia. But since Alberti's authorship has not been clearly proved, it is more prudent to class both Italian versions among those anonymous products of popular literature which will form the topic of my next chapter. ”

“ In Leone Battista Alberti (1404–72) we at length encounter a humanist accomplished alike in the learned and the vulgar tongue; while, like Leonardo da Vinci, to whom he offers a strong resemblance, less remarkable for any particular work than for the universality of his genius. An architect and mathematician, an engineer and the inventor of the camera obscura, he was almost the first of the moderns to treat these subjects scientifically, and extended his researches to painting and sculpture. ”

“ The Alberti were always Guelphs, they went into exile after the battle of Montaperti and their houses were destroyed. Alberto, son of Messer Jacopo, was a Prior when the first stone of the Palazzo de’ Signori was laid in 1294 (the first of forty-nine of his house) , while the number of Alberti who were prelates, ambassadors, gallant captains and knights of the Golden Spur, is innumerable. The death of Messer Niccolò degl’ Alberti in 1377, then one of the most illustrious and one of the richest citizens of Florence, was a public disaster. ”

“ After sorrowing over the loss of many arts and sciences and fearing that Nature is weary and worn out, he exclaims: “But when I returned from the long exile, in which we of the Alberti have grown old, to this our mother city which exceeds all others in the beauty of her monuments, I perceived that many living men, but first of all you, Filippo, and our dearest friend Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Luca della Robbia and Masaccio, were not of less account for genius and noble work than any ancient artist of great fame.” ”

“ He was said to have foretold a bloody catastrophe in the family of Este, the fate of Florence, and the death of the Popes years before they happened, and to be able to read into the countenances and the hearts of men. It need not be added that an iron will pervaded and sustained his whole personality; like all the great men of the Renaissance, he said, ‘Men can do all things if they will.’
And Lionardo da Vinci was to Alberti as the finisher to the beginner, as the master to the dilettante. Would only that Vasari’s work were here supplemented by a description like that of Alberti! ”

“ Of Alberti's ethical discourses I am inclined to rate this next to the Famiglia; nor did the Italian Renaissance produce any disquisition of the kind more elevated in feeling, finer in temper, or glowing with an eloquence at once so spontaneous and so dignified. We have to return to Petrarch to find the same high humanistic passion; and Alberti's Italian is here more winning than Petrarch's Latin. Had Pico condescended to the vulgar tongue, he might have produced work of similar quality; for the essay on the Dignity of Man is written in the same spirit. ”

“ The most original products of the Italian stage are the Aminta and the Pastor Fido, penetrated through and through with a real love of the country—not with any feeling for Nature in her sublimer and wilder aspects, but with the old Saturnian pathos and fresh clinging loveliness of nature made the friend of man and humanized by labor. The tears shed by Alberti over the rich fields of autumn, as he gazed upon them from some Tuscan summit, seem to have fallen like a dew of real emotion upon the driest places of a pastoral literature which is too often conventional. ”

“ No one could have been better fitted for the task. Unlike Alberti, Lorenzo was a Florentine of the Florentines, Tuscan to the backbone, imbued with the spirit of his city, a passionate lover of her customs and pastimes, a complete master of her vernacular. His education, though it fitted him for Platonic discussions with Ficino and rendered him an amateur of humanistic culture, had failed to make a pedant of him. Much as he appreciated the classics, he preferred his Tuscan poets; and what he learned at school, he brought to bear upon the study of the native literature. ”

“ The sonorous introduction to the first book of the Family reviews the glories of the Empire and the decadence of Rome with a pomp of phrase, a passion of eloquence, that stir our spirit like the tramp of legions waking echoes in a ruined Roman colonnade. [220] Yet in spite of this devotion to the past, Alberti, like Villani, felt that his Italians of the modern age had destinies and auspices apart from those of ancient Rome. He was resolved to make the speech of that new nation, heiress of the Latin name, equal in dignity to Cicero's and Livy's. ”

“ Lorenzo took up the argument in favour of the βίος πρακτικός. If Alberti proved that solitude and meditation are the nurses of great spirits, that man by communing with nature enters into full possession of his mental kingdom, Lorenzo pointed out that this completion of self-culture only finds its use and value in the commerce of the world. The philosopher must descend from his altitude and mix with men, in order to exercise the faculties matured by contemplation. ”