The Great Artist Leon Battista Alberti - Essay Example

Leon Battista Alberti was born in Genoa, Italy February 14, 1404. He is d for being a humanist and architect. He was an illegitimate child of Lorenzo Alberti, a merchant from Florence. His father hailed from a prosperous family of business persons. The family lived in exile in Genoa because they were expelled in 1401by the republican government. This was not confined only to the Alberti family as many other prosperous families were also expelled from the city of Florence at that time. Alberti assumed the first name Leon when he was much older. Leon’s mother was Bianca Fieschi. She was a Bolognese widow who died during an outbreak of bubonic plague. Leon and another illegitimate brother were moved to Venice during the outbreak of the plague in Genoa. He lived with his father, brother, and stepmother, a Florentine woman whom his father married in 1408. In Venice his father helped in the daily affairs of the family banking business. In 1414 young Alberti attended the famous humanist school of Gasparino Barzizza in Padua where he studies Latin and Greek classics. After leaving that school in 1418 he went on to study canon law at the University of Bologna from 1421 to 1428. His uncles supported him during this time after the death of his father the same year he started university. Although they were illegitimate children Leon and his brother were well loved and cared for by their father. They were his only children but the family, for the most part, were intent on cheating them out of their inheritance on the death of their father. Alberti’s first Latin comedy, Philodoxeus was written in 1424. The message in the comedy was that ‘a man dedicated to study and hard work can attain glory, just as well as a rich and fortunate man’. A few years later he wrote On the Utility and Disadvantages of the Study of Letters. This was dedicated to Carlos, his brother, who was also a scholar and a writer. It was a reflection of his disillusionment with political and social aspects of everyday living. Among his other written work are two prose dialogues, Deiphira and Ecatonfilea which were dramatizations of the vicissitude of love. He also wrote a collection of philosophical and satirical dialogues entitled Intercenales translated as “Dinner Pieces”. Pope Martin V lifted the ban on the Alberti family in 1428 and so Leon was allowed to visit the city of Florence for the first time. There he developed a friendship with the famous architect, Brunelleschi. In 1431 he went to work as Latin secretary to patriarch of Grado, Biagio Molin and in 1432 he became abbreviator of the papal court. He also rewrote in Latin the lives of a number or martyrs and saints. He later took Holy Orders and was assigned rector of the parish of San Lorenzo near to Florence. As rector he also served as papal inspector of monuments. In 1434 Alberti accompanied Pope Eugenius IV to Florence. They were fleeing from the unrest in Rome. In Florence he was appointed canon of Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral. Its dome was the largest in the world, a masterpiece in art, science, and technology and was designed by Brunelleschi. Influenced by other artists such as Donatello and Ghiberti Leon began to compose his theoretical treatises on the visual arts. In 1436 he wrote De pictura and Della pittura the Italian version which was dedicated to Brunelleschi. De sculptura was another of his treatises. Through these written works he portrayed his love for Mathematics which he described as the common ground of arts and sciences. He felt that beauty especially as related to painting should be in harmony with respect to number, proportion and arrangement. In 1447 Alberti began work on the Rucellai Palace in Florence. It was completed in 1431. He was also commissioned to work on the Gothic church of San Francesco later known as Tempio Malatestiano. He enclosed the exterior in a classical envelope of arcades at the sides and the dominating triumphal arch motif on the façade. The building was never quite finished. Alberti’s assistants were largely involved in the construction since he was living outside of Rimini. San Sebastiano and San Andrea were the only building that Alberti designed entirely by himself. In 1450 Pope Nicholas V formulated a great building program for the city of Rome. Among the construction to be done was addition to the Vatican Palace and the rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica. The Leonine Burgo section of the city was also among the plan for development. Alberti helped in the formulation of this building project although only a portion of the plan was realized. This included the restoration of the Roman aqueduct of Acqua Vergine. Alberti had earlier outlined his fascination of Rome’s topography and monuments in his writing, Descriptio Urbis Romae. He also wrote a treatise on architecture De re aedificatoria the first architectural treaty of the Renaissance. This dealt with a variety of topics such as design, location and materials for buildings as well as the demands for buildings for public and private use. Alberti designed the palace for Giovanni Rucellai, the prosperous Florentine banker, who later commissioned him to design the façade of the gothic church San Maria Novella in Florence. He also did some renovations on Rusellai’s family chapel as well as the execution of the Shrine of the Holy Sepulcher in the chapel. This was completed in 1467. After Pope Paul II dismissed the posts of papal abbreviators in 1464, Alberti gained more time to carry out his architectural commissions. In 1470 he designed a great Latin cross plan for the church of San Andrea. He described it as an Etruscan temple. In that same year he was commissioned by Lodovico Gonzaga to revise the plan for the rotunda for the church of San Annunziata in Florence. In 1471 he served as guide to the antiquities of Rome. Alberti’s treatises had widespread influence on paintings and architecture. The philosophy of the French seventeenth centuries academies of paintings and architecture was largely based on artistic principles formulated by Alberti. Church architecture was also influenced by his writings and designs. He also wrote extensively on other subject areas such at the family, marriage and education. He is also known to be inventor for the first polyalphabetic ciphers. Alberti died in Rome in April 1472. Alberti, Leon Batttista. Momus. Trans. Sarah Knight. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003. Print. ---. On Painting. Trans. Martin Kemp. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1991. Print. Grafton, Anthony. Leon Battista Alberti: master builder of the Italian Renaissance. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2001. “Leon Batista Alberti Biography”. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Web. November 8, 2009. “Leon Battista Alberti”. New World Encyclopedia. Web. November 8, 2009. Read More