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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Los Angeles

Alberti Before Florence: Early Sources Informing Leon Battista Alberti’s De Pictura

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

in Art History

by

Peter Francis Weller

2014

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Peter Francis Weller

2014

ii

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Alberti Before Florence: Early Sources Informing Leon Battista Alberti’s De Pictura

By

Peter Francis Weller

Doctor of Philosophy in Art History

University of California, Los Angeles, 2014

Professor Charlene Villaseñor Black, Chair

De pictura by Leon Battista Alberti (1404?-1472) is the earliest surviving treatise on

visual art written in humanist Latin by an ostensible practitioner of painting. The book

represents a definitive moment of cohesion between the two most conspicuous cultural

developments of the early Renaissance, namely, humanism and the visual arts. This dissertation

reconstructs the intellectual and visual environments in which Alberti moved before he entered

Florence in the curia of Pope Eugenius IV in 1434, one year before the recorded date of

completion of De pictura. For the two decades prior to his arrival in Florence, from 1414 to

1434, Alberti resided in Padua, Bologna, and Rome. Examination of specific textual and visual

material in those cities – sources germane to Alberti’s humanist and visual development, and

thus to the ideas put forth in De pictura – has been insubstantial. This dissertation will therefore

present an investigation into the sources available to Alberti in Padua, Bologna and Rome, and

will argue that this material helped to shape the prescriptions in Alberti’s canonical Renaissance

tract. By more fully accounting for his intellectual and artistic progression before his arrival in

Florence, this forensic reconstruction aims to fill a gap in our knowledge of Alberti’s formative

years and thereby underline impact of his early career upon his development as an art theorist.

iii

This dissertation of Peter Francis Weller is approved.

Peter Stacey

Robert Williams

Charlene Villaseñor Black, Committee Chair

University of California, Los Angeles

2014

iv

Dedicated to my extraordinary wife, Sheri and beautiful son, Teddy, both of whom never allowed

reading Latin in bed;

To my own personal ‘Pietro Bembo,’ Mark Hime of Biblioctopus;

and to Stan and Brian Shuster of the Grand Havana Room who loaned me the “office” for seven

years to complete the bulk of this toil.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract……………………………………………………...…………………………………….ii

Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………...iv

List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………..ix

Acknowledgments………………………...……………………………………………………xxii

Vita…………………………………………………………………………………………….xxiii

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..…1

Chapter 1. Padua: Historical and Intellectual Context…………………………………………...39

Liberation and Return to Commune (1256-1318)…………………………………….…42

Commune Demise and Rise of the Carrara (1310-1338)………………………………...44

Carrara Dynasty to Venetian Dominance (1338-1405)……………………………….....45

Paduan Intellectual Culture: (c. 1250-1400)……………………………………………..47

Petrarch and the “Studia Humanitatis”…………………………………………………..64

Pier Paolo Vergerio and Rhetoric of the Court…………………………………………..80

Florentine Humanism in Paduan Context……………………………………………..…88

Chapter 2. Alberti in Padua I: Intellectual Education…………………………………………....93

Gasparino Barzizza: Pedagogy and Virtue in Renaissance Padua……………………….95

Barzizza, the Studium and his Private School…………………………………………....98

Alberti’s Facility as a Student…………………………………………………..101

Alberti’s Courses with Barzizza………………………………………………………..103

Alberti and Inventio………………………………………………………….…111

Guarino da Verona and Lucian…………………………………………………………115

vi

Barzizza, Alberti and Imitatio…………………………………………………………..120

Vittorino da Feltre and Science………………………………………………....126

Chapter 3. Alberti in Padua II: Alberti’s Visual Education…………………………………….134

Antique Sources………………………………………………………………………...136

Giovanni Dondi del Orologio and Text on Monuments......................................138

Carrara Medals and Pisanello…………………………………………………..143

Giotto to Altichiero……………………………………………………………………..145

Giotto...................................................................................................................147

Hypothesis for Giotto only……………………………………………...151

Alberti and Cennini……………………………………………………..153

Painting and Imitatio.…………………………………………………...156

Cappella Scrovegni: Background………………………………………161

Cappella Fame: Giotto and Humanism…………………………………164

Altichiero……………………………………………………………………….170

Palazzo Carrarese and the Lost Frescoes……………………………….171

Sala Vivorum Illustrium and the De viris illustribus…………………...174

St. James Chapel………………………………………………………..184

Portraits………………………………………………………………....186

Chapter 4. Alberti in Bologna…………………………………………………………………..191

Intellectual Context……………………………………………………………………..192

Alberti and the University of Bologna………………………………………….192

Humanism and the University………………………………………….195

Alberti and the University……………………………………………....199

Quadrivium and Mathematics…………………………………………..200

vii

Alberti’s Historiography of Perspective………………………..204

Bacon and Painting……………………………………………..205

Pelacani, Alberti and Mathematics……………………………..210

Alberti’s Early Writings………………………………………………...213

Visual Context………………………………………………………………………….220

Nicola Pisano…………………………………………………………………...232

Professor’s Tomb and Manuscript Illumination……………………………..…234

Jacopo della Quercia and San Petronio………………………………………...236

Alberti and Northern Europe…………………………………………………...237

Portraiture and Jan Van Eyck………………………………………………..…240

Chapter 5. Alberti in Rome……………………………………………………………………..245

Intellectual Context……………………………………………………………………..247

Alberti and the Church………………………………………………………….247

The Topography of Rome………………………………………………………249

Historia in Intellectual Context………………………………………………...253

Visual Context: Historia………………………………………………………………..257

Antique Sources………………………………………………………………...257

Post-Antique Visual Sources…………………………………………………...263

Pre-Thirteenth Century Influence………………………………………265

Pietro Cavallini…………………………………………………………266

Gentile and Pisanello…………………………………………………………...270

Ghiberti…………………………………………………………………………271

Masolino and Masaccio in Rome…………………………………………….…274

viii

Polemic on Masaccio the Painter……………………………………….275

Masolino………………………………………………………………..278

Donatello………………………………………………………………………..281

Alberti’s Criticism and Counsel………………………………………………...289

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...293

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………...….296

Images…………………………………………………………………………………………..332

ix

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 0.1. Mateo di Pasti, Medal of Leon Battista Alberti, 1450-55, bronze,
British Museum, London……………………………………………………………………….332

Figure 0.2. Donatello, St. George, c. 1416, marble relief for the Armorers’ and Sword Makers’
Guild niche of the Orsamichele, 39 x 120 cm, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence……...333

Figure 0.3, St. George, detail predella, c. 1416, marble relief, 39 x 120 cm,
Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence………………………………………….……………334

Figure 0.4. Donatello, Feast of Herod, c.1423-27, gilt bronze panel, Baptismal Font
Baptistery, Siena……………………………………………………………………………..…335

Figure 0.5. Lorenzo Ghiberti, Eastern Door of Florence Baptistery, 1425-52, bronze with
gilding, 599 x 462 cm, Baptistery, Florence……………………………………………………336

Figure 0.6. Masaccio, Trinity, 1425-28, Fresco, 667 x 317 cm, Church of Santa Maria
Novella, Florence…………………………………….…………………………………………337

Figure 0.7. Pisanello, Medal of Vittorino da Feltre, 1446, bronze, Private Collection………...338

Figure 0.8. Enrico Marengo (Heinrich Meyring)?, Statue of Francesco Barbaro, c. 1714,
Church of Santa Maria del Giglio, Venice……………………………………………………...339

Figure 0.9. Unknown Artist, Antonio Beccadelli, 1754, oil on canvas, 26 x24 inches,
Sala del Consiglio, Retoratto, Bologna……………………………………………..…………..340

Figure 0.10. Provincial Roman Altar (after neo-Attic model from Callimachus, later 5th

century B.C.E.), 1st/2nd century C.E., Museo Civico, Padua………….………………..……....341

Figure 0.11. Jacopo Bellini, Drawings of Roman Tombs and Altars, 1430’s?,
Musée du Louvre, Paris……………………………………………….………………………..342

Figure 0.12. Provincial Roman Funerary Altar, 1st/2nd century C.E., Museo Civico, Padua, and
Jacopo Bellini, detail Tomb with Inscription and Maenads, 1430’s, Musée du Louvre, Paris...343

Figure 0.13. Meleager/Calydonian Hunt, Roman sarcophagus, late 3rd century C.E., Woburn
Abbey, Bedfordshire……………………………………………………………………………344

Figure 0.14. Pisanello, Portrait Medal of Lionello d’Este, Marchese of Ferrara, 1441,
bronze, British Museum, London………………………………….......……………………….345

Figure 0.15. Marcus Setus, Medal of Francesco Il Vecchio “FRANCISCVS SENIOR DE
CARRARIA D PAD,” 1370s?, bronze, New York, American Numismatic Society…………..346

x

Figure 0.16. Marcus Setus, Carrara portrait medal, reverse, Carrara coat of arms, “QVI SVM
CIVI BENI REX IT, AN XXXVII MVIIII D V,” 1370s? bronze, New York, American
Numismatic Society…………………………………………………………………………….347

Figure 0.17. Portrait Medal of Francesco Novello da Carrara, obverse, “FRANCISCVS
IVNIOR DE CARR VIII PATAVII DI ANN MCCCXC,” c. 1390, bronze, New York,
American Numismatic Society…………………………………………...…………………….348

Figure 0.18. Portrait Medal of Francesco Novello da Carrara, reverse, Carrara coat of arms,
“NECAT AN MCCCC VI DIE XIX IAN,” c. 1390, bronze, New York,
American Numismatic Society…………………………………..……………………………..349

Figure 0.19 Parri Spinelli, 1400 copy of Navicella (lost) by Giotto di Bondone, 1305-1313,
pen on paper, 274 x 388 mm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York…………………....…350

Figure 0.20. Giotto di Bondone, Life of Mary and Jesus, 1304-06, fresco cycle (altar view),
Cappella Scrovegni, Padua…………………………………………………………………..…351

Figure 0.21. Giotto di Bondone, Lives of Mary and Jesus, 1303-06, fresco cycle
(entrance view) Cappella Scrovegni, Padua………………………..…………………………..352

Figure 0.22. Giotto di Bondone, Last Supper, 1304-06, fresco, 200 x 185 cm, Cappella
Scrovegni, Padua………………………………………………………………………………..353

Figure 0.23. Giotto di Bondone, Meeting of Joachim and Anne at the Gate, 1304-06, fresco,
200 x 185 cm, Cappella Scrovegni, Padua……………………………………………….…….354

Figure 0.24. Giotto di Bondone, Arrest of Christ, 1304-06, fresco, 200 x 185 cm, Cappella
Scrovegni, Padua………………………………………………………………………………..355

Figure 0.25. Giotto di Bondone, Lamentation, 1304-06, fresco, 200 x 185 cm, Cappella
Scrovegni, Padua………………………………………………………………………………..356

Figure 0.26. Altichiero da Zevio, Entrance to the Chapel of St. James, c. 1375,
Basilica of San Antonio, Padua………………………………………..……………………….357

Figure 0.27. Altichiero da Zevio, Crucifixion, c. 1375, Chapel of St. James, Basilica of San
Antonio, Padua………………………………………………………………………………….358

Figure 0.28. Altichiero da Zevio, Tomb of Bonafacio Lupi with Man of Sorrows, c. 1375,
fresco, Chapel of St. James, Basilica of San Antonio, Padua…………………………....….….359

Figure 0.29. Altichiero da Zevio, Council of King Ramiro, 1370’s, fresco,
Chapel of St. James, Basilica of San Antonio, Padua……………………………...…………...360

xi

Figure 0.30. Altichiero da Zevio, Detail of Liberation and Pursuit of St. James’s Companions,
c. 1375, fresco, Chapel of St. James, Basilica of San Antonio, Padua…………………....…....361

Figure 0.31. Altichiero da Zevio, Detail of horse, Liberation and Pursuit of St. James’s
Companions, c. 1375, fresco, Chapel of St. James, Basilica of San Antonio, Padua…………..362

Figure 0.32. Altichiero da Zevio, Death of St. Lucy, 1379-1384, fresco, 237 x 290 cm,
Oratory of St. George, Padua………………………………………………………..………….363

Figure 0.33. After Altichiero, Hadrian, 15th century drawing from Sala Grande,
Castelvecchio, Verona…………………………………...……………………………………..364

Figure 0.34. Sala Vivorum Illustrium (Sala dei Giganti), Palazzo Carraresi, Padua…………...365

Figure 0.35. Lives of Caesars, 16th century rework of Altichiero’s late 1370’s fresco,
Sala dei Giganti, Palazzo Carraresi, Padua……………………………………………..………366

Figure 0.36. Altichiero, Petrarch in his Study, 1377, fresco, Sala di Virorum Illustribus
(Sala dei Giganti), Palazzo Carraresi, Padua………………………………….……………..…367

Figure 0.37. Jacopo della Quercia, The Creation of Adam, 1425-1435, Istrian stone,
99 x 92 cm, San Petronio, Bologna………………………………………….………………….368

Figure 0.38. Jacopo della Quercia, Temptation, 1425-1428, Istrian stone, 99 x 92 cm, San
Petronio, Bologna………………………………………………………………………………369

Figure 0.39. Anonymous workshop, Professor’s Tomb of Giovanni d’Andrea, 1350, granite,
Museo Civico, Bologna…………………………………………………………………...……370

Figure 0.40. Laurentius de Voltolina, Henricus de Alemannia con i suoi student, Liber ethicorum
des Henricus de Alemannia, pigments on parchment, 18 x 22cm, Kupferstichkabinett,
Berlin……………………………………………………………………………………………371

Figure 0.41. Anonymous, Gratian, Decretum: De poenitentia, detail of Manuscript Illumination
for Canon Law at the University of Bologna, c.1320-1330, MS 400-2000, Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge, England………………………………………………………………....372

Figure 0.42. Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Cardinal Albergati, 1435, oil, 212 x 180 mm,
Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden………………………………………………………………..…373

Figure 0.43. Jan Van Eyck, Adoration of the Lamb (Ghent Altarpiece) 15th century, oil on panel
polyptych, measures 375 x 260 cm closed, Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium…………...374

Figure 0.44. Jan Van Eyck, Donor Portrait in the Ghent Altarpiece, 15th century, oil on panel
polyptych, Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium……………………………………………..375

xii

Figure 0.45. Jan Van Eyck, Donor Portrait in the Ghent Altarpiece, 15th century, oil on panel
polyptych, Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium…………………………………………..…376

Figure 0.46. Jan Van Eyck, Detail from Ghent Altarpiece, 15th century, oil on panel polyptych,
Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium…………………………………………………………377

Figure 0.47. Jan Van Eyck, Detail from Ghent Altarpiece, 15th century, oil on panel polyptych,
Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium………………………………………………………....378

Figure 0.48. Carrying the Body of Dead Meleager, (lost) Roman sarcophagus cover, late 2nd
century C.E., formerly in Palazzo Sciarra, Rome………………………………………………379

Figure 0.49. Dead Meleager, Roman sarcophagus relief, 2nd-3rd century C.E., Ostia………….380

Figure 0.50. Pietro Cavalini, Last Judgment, detail of Apostles, 1295-1300, fresco, Santa
Cecelia, Rome…………………………………………………………………………………..381

Figure 0.51. Pietro Cavalini, Nativity of the Virgin, 1296-1300, mosaic, Santa Maria in
Trastevere, Rome…………………………………………………………………………….…382

Figure 0.52. Francesco Borromini, Drawing of North Nave Wall of St. John Lateran (after
Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello, 1427-1431 in St. John Lateran, Rome),
Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin…………..……………………........………………………………383

Figure 1.1. Massimo Galvani, Ezzelino III da Romano, 16th century, woodcut, from Ritratti,
et elogii di Capitani illustri (Pompilio Totti, Roma, 1635)………………………………....….384

Figure 1.2. Northern Italian School, Anonymous, Cangrande della Scala, oil on poplar,
22.8 x 16.8 cm, National Museum, Liverpool………………………………………….………385

Figure 1.3. Giovanni Mansionario, Roman coin drawings on recto and verso of the Historia
Imperialis, Ms. Chig. I. VII. 259, f13r, Vatican Library, Vatican……………………………...386

Figure 1.4. Guariento d’Arpo, Angel, 1354, tempera on panel, Museo Civico, Padua………...387

Figure 1.5. Guariento d’Arpo, Angel, 1354, tempera on panel, Museo Civico, Padua………...388

Figure 1.6. Guariento d’Arpo, Angel, 1354, tempera on panel, Museo Civico, Padua………...389

Figure 1.7. Guariento d’Arpo, Archangel, 1350, tempera on panel, 80 x 57 cm,
Museo Civico, Padua………………………………………………….......……………………390

Figure 2.1. Botticelli, Calumny of Apelles, 1494-95, tempera on panel, 62 x 91 cm,
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence………………………………….....……………………………391

xiii

Figure 3.1 Agostino Zoppo, Virtue or Sibyl from Padua, bronze, 48.3 cm,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York……………………...……………………………….392

Figure 3.2. Donatello, Equestrian statue of Erasmo da Narni (Gattamelata), 1447, bronze,
340 x 390 cm, Piazza del Santo, Padua……………………………………......……………….393

Figure 3.3. Benozzo Gozzoli, Procession of the Oldest King, detail, portrait of Cyriaco da
Ancona fresco, c.1459, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence……………………………………394

Figure 3.4. Leon Battista Alberti, Arco del Cavallo, 1438-1450?, Stone and marble, Ferrara,
Italy……………………………………………………………………………………………..395

Figure 3.5. Leon Battista Alberti, detail of Arco da Cavallo, 1438-1450?, stone and marble,
Ferrara, Italy…………………………………………………………………………………….396

Figure 3.6. Pisanello, Medal of Emperor John VIII Palaeologus (obverse and reverse),
c. 1438, copper alloy, diameter 10 cm, Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin………….....397

Figure 3.7. Niklas von Wyle, Self Portrait, 1460-1466, drawing on parchment, Esslinger
Stadtschreiber, Esslinger, Germany…………………………………………………………….398

Figure 3.8. Leon Battista Alberti, Exterior of Tempio Malatestiana, 1450, San Francesco,
Rimini…………………………………………………………………………………………..399

Figure 3.9. Leon Battista Alberti, Holy Tomb of Christ, c. 1458, San Pancrazio, Florence……400

Figure 3.10. Giotto di Bondone, Scenes from the Life of Saint Francis: Apparition at Arles,
1325, fresco, 280 x 450 cm, Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence…………………..………...401

Figure 3.11. Giotto di Bondone, Scenes from the Life of St John the Baptist (north wall),
c. 1315 fresco, Peruzzi Chapel, Church of Santa Croce, Florence…………………...………...402

Figure 3.12. Giotto di Bondone, Baroncelli Polyptych, c. 1334, tempera on wood,
185 x 323 cm, Baroncelli Chapel, Church of Santa Croce, Florence……………………....…..403

Figure 3.13. Giotto, Crucifix, Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence…………….………...404

Figure 3.14. Rhetorica ad Herrenium, manuscript illumination from Padua, possibly of
Petrarch, 1380, Nicholas of Bologna, sold at auction at Christie’s New York in 2001………..405

Figure 3.15. Giusto de Menabuoi, Paradise and Stories from the Life of Christ, fresco,
Baptistery, Padua……………………………………………………………………………….406

Figure 3.16. Giotto, Virtues and Vices Cycle: Prudence, fresco, Cappella degli Scrovegni,
Padua…………………………………………………………………………………………....407

xiv

Figure 3.17. Giotto, Circumspection, 1305, fresco, north doorway of Cappella Scrovegni,
Padua……………………………………………………………………………………………408

Figure 3.18. Giotto, Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, 1304-06, fresco,
200 x 185 cm, Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua…………………………………….409

Figure 3.19. Guariento di Arpo, Panel of Angelic Order, 1360s, tempera on panel,
14th Century, Padua…………………………………......………………………………………410

Figure 3.20. Guariento di Arpo, Detail of Panel of Angelic Order, tempera on panel, 14th
Century, Padua………………………………………………………………………………….411

Figure 3.21. Altichiero, Petrarch in his Study, manuscript illumination of De viris illustribus,
codex no. 101, Hessische Landes-Unt-Hochschul-Bibliothec, Darmstadt, Germany………….412

Figure 3.22. Alticheiro, The Building Of The Walls Of Rome; The Quarrels of Romulus and
Remus, c. 1400, manuscript illumination of De viris illustribus, codex no. 101, folio 4v,
Hessische Landes-Unt-Hochschul-Bibliothec, Darmstadt, Germany…………………………..413

Figure 3.23. Altichiero, The Siege Of Rome, c. 1400, manuscript illumination of De Viris
Illustribus, codex no. 101, folio 19r, Hessische Landes-Unt-Hochschul-Bibliothec,
Darmstadt, Germany…………………………………………………………….....…………...414

Figure 3.24. Basillica San Nicola in Carcere, (ruins of the Forum Holitorium),
1100s to 1500s, Rome...…………...….......…………………………………………………….415

Figure 3.25. Altichiero, Ancus Martius ships A God, c. 1400, manuscript illumination of De Viris
Illustribus, codex no. 101, folio 7v, Hessische Landes-Unt-Hochschul-Bibliothec, Darmstadt,
Germany………………………………………………………………………………………...416

Figure 3.26. Altichiero, Alexander Worships A Goddess, c. 1400, manuscript illumination of De
Viris Illustribus, codex no. 101, folio 22r, Hessische Landes-Unt-Hochschul-Bibliothec,
Darmstadt, Germany……………………………………………………………………………417

Figure 3.27. Andrea Mantegna, St. James Led to His Execution, 1455, cartoon copy of fresco
(lost), Ovitari Chapel, Church of the Eremitani, Padua………………………………………...418

Figure 3.28. Raffaello Sanzio, The School of Athens, 1509, fresco, width at base 770 cm,
Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican……………………………………………..419

Figure 3.29. Giusto de’ Menabuoi, Paradise, 1375-76, fresco, Baptistery, Padua…………….420

Figure 3.30. Altichiero da Zevio, Frescoes, Basillica di Sant’Antonio, Padua………………...421

Figure 3.31. Altichiero da Zevio, Detail of Nobles, Death of St. Lucy, 1379-1384, fresco,
237 x 290 cm, Oratory of St. George, Padua…………………………………….…….……….422

xv

Figure 3.32. Altichiero, St. George Baptising King Servio, 1370s, fresco,
Oratory of St. George, Padua…...................................................................................................423

Figure 3.33. Altichiero da Zevio, Crucifixion, 1376-79, fresco, 840 x 280 cm, Basillica di
Sant’Antonio, Padua……………………………………………………………………………424

Figure 3.34. Masaccio, Raising of the Son of Theophilus and St Peter Enthroned, 1426-27,
fresco, 230 x 598 cm, Cappella Brancacci, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence…………….…425

Figure 3.35. Masaccio, Raising of the Son of Theophilus and St Peter Enthroned, detail of
Coluccio Salutati (seated in grey)………………………………………………………………426

Figure 3.36. Masaccio, Raising of the Son of Theophilus and St Peter Enthroned, detail,
(Masaccio self portrait?)………………………………………………………………………..427

Figure 3.37. Altichiero da Zevio, Detail of Council of the Crown, (portraits of Petrarch,
Lombardo della Seta, et al.) c. 1375, fresco, Chapel of St. James, Basilica of San Antonio,
Padua……………………………………………………………………………………………428

Figure 3.38. Altichiero da Zevio, Detail of Council of the Crown (portraits of Catarina and
Bonafacio Lupi) c. 1375, fresco, Chapel of St. James, Basilica of San Antonio, Padua……….429

Figure 3.39. Altichiero, Adoration of the Magi, 1380s, fresco, Oratory of St. George, Padua...430

Figure 4.1 Architectonic Wall 8, c. 60s-79 C.E., 2nd style Pompeian fresco, Villa Oplontis,
Torre Annunziata, Italy…………………………………………………………………..……..431

Figure 4.2. Architectonic Wall 8, c. 60s-79 C.E., 2nd style Pompeian fresco, Villa Oplontis,
Torre Annunziata, Italy…………………………………………………………………..…..…432

Figure 4.3. Isaac Master, Isaac Rejecting Esau, 1290s, fresco, 300 x 300 cm,
Upper Church of San Francesco, Assisi……………………………………...………………...433

Figure 4.4. Altichiero, Triumph of Glory, 1378, illuminated frontispiece of Petrarch’s
De viris illustribus, Bibliotheque Nationale (B.N. ms. lat. 6069F), Paris…………..……….…434

Figure 4.5. Medal of Constantine the Great, obverse, c. 1402, silver, 88 mm, Cabinet des
Médailles, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris……………………………………………435

Figure 4.6. Medal of Heraclius, reverse, c. 1402, silver, 97 mm, Cabinet des Médailles,
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris………………………………………………………..436

Figure 4.7. Nicola Pisano, Massacre of the Innocents, 1268, marble, Duomo Pulpit, Siena…..437

Figure 4.8. Giunta Pisano, Crucifix, 1240s, tempera on wood, 316 x 285 cm, San Domenico,
Bologna………………………………………………………………………………………....438

xvi

Figure 4.9. Coppo di Marcovaldo, Crucifix, after 1261, tempera on wood, 296 x 247 cm,
Pinacoteca Civica, San Gimignano……………………………………………………………..439

Figure 4.10. Phaedra, Roman sarcophagus, 2nd century C.E., Rome………………………..…440

Figure 4.11. Nicola Pisano, Adoration of the Shepherds,1260, marble, 85 x 113 cm,
Baptistery Pulpit, Pisa……………………………………………………………...…………...441

Figure 4.12. Nicola Pisano, Presentation in the Temple, 1260, marble, Baptistery Pulpit,
Pisa……………………………………………………………………………………………...442

Figure 4.13. Nicola Pisano, Fortitude, 1260, marble, height: 56 cm, Baptistry Pupit, Pisa……443

Figure 4.14. Nicola Pisano, Tomb of St. Domenico (Arca di San Domenico), c. 1265,
Basilica of San Domenico, Bologna……………………………………………..……………..444

Figure 4.15. Nicola Pisano, Tomb of St. Domenico (Arca di San Domenico), detail, c. 1265,
Basilica of San Domenico Bologna…………………………………………………………….445

Figure 4.16. Il Ilustratore, Crucifixion, The Missal of Cardinal Bertrand de Deux, 1340,
manuscript illumination, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City……………………….446

Figure 4.17. Ambrosio Lorenzetti, Annunciation, 1344, tempera on wood, 127 x 120 cm,
Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena……………………………………………………………………447

Figure 4.18. Ambrogio Lorenzetti, The Presentation in the Temple, 1342, Panel,
257 x 168 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence………………………………………………….448

Figure 4.19. Jan van Eyck, Madonna with Canon van der Paele, 1436, oil on wood,
122 x 157 cm, Groeninge Museum, Bruges…………………………………...……………….449

Figure 4.20. Jacopo della Quercia, Expulsion of Adam and Eve, 1425-1435, Istrian stone,
99 x 92 cm, San Petronio, Bologna…………………………………………………………..…450

Figure 4.21. Main Portal / Doors of San Petronio, Bologna………………………………...…451

Figure 4.22. Diomedes and Palladium, gem (Chalcedony intaglio), Roman copy of 1st

century C.E., lost………………………………………………...……………………………...452

Figure 4.23. Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides, Roman relief copy of Greek 5th
century B.C.E., Villa Albani, Rome…………………………...……………………………….453

Figure 4.24. Giotto di Bondone, Last Judgment, 1306, fresco, 1000 x 840 cm, Cappella
Scrovegni, Padua………………………………………………………………………………..454

xvii

Figure 4.25. Giotto di Bondone, Last Judgment, detail of Enrico Scrovegni, 1306, fresco,
Cappella Scrovegni, Padua…………………………………………………………………..…455

Figure 4.26. Antonello da Messina, Portrait of a Man (Il Condottiere), 1475, oil on canvas,
36 x 30 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris…………………………………………………………..456

Figure 4.27. Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Cardinal Albergati, 1435, silverpoint, 212 x 180 mm,
Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden…………………………………………………………………..457

Figure 4.28. Jan van Eyck, St Jerome, 1442, oil on parchment on oak panel, 20 x 12.5 cm,
Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan……………………………………………………………..458

Figure 4.29. Jan Van Eyck, Portrait of Philip the Good, after 1450, oil on panel, 31 x 23 cm,
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, France…………………………………………………….…459

Figure 4.30. Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, 1434, oil on oak,
82 x 60 cm, National Gallery, London…………………………………...…………………….460

Figure 4.31. Jan van Eyck, Suckling Madonna Enthroned (Lucca Madonna), c. 1436, oil on
wood, 65.5 x 49.5 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt…………………………………...461

Figure 5.1. Spinario (Boy with Thorn), 1st century B.C.E., 3rd century (body) and 5th century
(head) originals, bronze, Capitoline Museum, Rome………………………………………..…462

Figure 5.2. Filippo Brunoleschi, Old Sacristy, 1418-1428, Church of San Lorenzo,
Florence………………………………………………………………………………………....463

Figure 5.3. Baptistery of Padua, 12th century C.E., Romanesque reconstruction of original 4th
century C.E., Padua……………………………………………………………………………..464

Figure 5.4. Lupa Capitolina (Romulus and Remus by Antonio Pollaiolo? 1470s), bronze,
13th cent?, 75 x 114 cm, Palazzo dei Conservatori/Capitoline Museum, Rome………….…….465

Figure 5.5. Camillus (acolyte serving youth), 2nd century C.E.?, bronze with silver eyes,
1.41 m high, Palazzo dei Conservatori, Capitoline Museum, Rome………………………...…466

Figure 5.6. River god Capitoline Tiber, 2nd century C.E., marble, Capitoline Hill, Rome…….467

Figure 5.7. River god, Capitoline Nile, 2nd century C.E., marble, Capitoline Hill, Rome……..468

Figure 5.8. Fontana dei Dioscuri, c.1600-1800, Rome………………………………………...469

Figure 5.9. River god Marforio, 2nd century C.E., marble, Capitoline Museum, Rome……….470

Figure 5.10. Head of Constantine?, c. 312-315 C.E., marble, brick, wood, gilded bronze,
Capitoline Museum, Rome……………………………………………………………………..471

xviii

Figure 5.11. Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius, 175 C.E., bronze, 4.24 m. high,
Palazzo dei Conservatori, Capitoline Museum, Rome…………………………………………472

Figure 5.12. Arch of Titus, 81 C.E., Via Sacra, Rome………………………………………….473

Figure 5.13. Arch of Constantine, 315 C.E., Rome…………………………………………….474

Figure 5.14. Arch of Septimius Severus, 203 C.E., Rome………………………………………475

Figure 5.15. Column of Trajan, 113 C.E., Rome……………………………………………….476

Figure 5.16. Column of Marcus Aurelius, 193 C.E.?, Piazza Colonna, Rome…………………477

Figure 5.17. Biography of Roman General with Marriage Ceremony, Roman sarcophagus,
2nd century C.E., Galleria dei Uffizi, Florence……………………………………......………..478

Figure 5.18. Orestes, Roman sarcophagus, 2nd century C.E., Palazzo Giustiniani, Rome……..479

Figure 5.19. Judgment of Paris, Roman sarcophagus relief, mid-2nd century C.E.,
Villa Doria Pamphili, Rome……………………………………………………………………480

Figure 5.20. Indian Triumph of Bacchus, Roman sarcophagus, end of 2nd century C.E.,
Palazzo Rospigliosi, Casino of Aurora, Rome……………………………………...…………..481

Figure 5.21. Maidens Decorating Candelabrum, Roman relief, copy of neo-Attic relief,
1st cent B.C.E.-1st century C.E. Musée du Louvre, Paris……………………………………….482

Figure 5.22. Mercury Psychompompos Emerging from the Gates of Hades, Roman sarcophagus
from Baptistery of San Giovanni, Florence, 3rd century C.E., Museo dell’Opera del Duomo,
Florence…………………………………………………………………………………………483

Figure 5.23. Jacopo Torriti, Coronation of the Virgin, 1296, mosaic, Santa Maria Maggiore,
Rome……………………………………………………………………………………………484

Figure 5.24. Giotto, Seven Virtues: Justice, detail, 1306, fresco, 120 x 60 cm,
Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua………………………………………………….…485

Figure 5.25. Pietro Cavallini, Annunciation, 1296-1300, mosaic, Church of Santa Maria in
Trastevere, Rome……………………………………………………………………………….486

Figure 5.26. Pietro Cavallini, Adoration of the Magi, 1296-1300, mosaic,
Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome………………………..………………………….487

Figure 5.27. Pietro Cavalini, Last Judgment, detail of Apostles, 1295-1300, fresco, Santa
Cecelia, Rome…………………………………………………………………………………..488

xix

Figure 5.28. Giotto di Bondone, The Stefaneschi Triptych (front), c. 1330, tempera on panel,
220 x 245 cm, Pinacoteca, Vatican…………………………………………………….……….489

Figure 5.29. Pisanello, Perspective Illustration, c.1444, pen on paper, Vallardi Collection,
Musée du Louvre, Paris………………………………………………………………………...490

Figure 5.30. Pisanello, Horses, 1433-38, pen on paper, 200 x 165 mm, Musée du Louvre,
Paris…………………………………………………………………………………………..…491

Figure 5.31. Lorenzo Ghiberti, Solomon and Sheba, 1425-52, gilded bronze, 79 x 79 cm,
for the East doors of Baptistery, now in Museo del Opera del Duomo, Florence…………...…492

Figure 5.32. Lorenzo, Ghiberti, The Story of Joseph 1425-52 Gilded bronze, 79 x 79 cm
Baptistry, Florence…………………………………………………………………………..….493

Figure 5.33. Donatello, Ciborium, 1432-35, marble, Treasury of the Cappella
della Sagrestia dei Beneficiati, St Peter’s, Rome…………………..…………………………...494

Figure 5.34. Donatello, Tomb of Giovanni Crivelli, 1432-33, marble, Santa Maria in Aracoeli,
Rome…………………………………………………………………………………………....495

Figure 5.35. Donatello, Tomb of Giovanni Crivelli (detail), 1432-33, marble, Santa Maria in
Aracoeli, Rome…………………………………………………………………………………496

Figure 5.36. Leon Battista Alberti, Self-Portrait, c. 1435, bronze, height 20 cm,
National Gallery of Art, Washington………………………………………………………...…497

Figure 5.37. Cathedral of San Stefano (Prato Duomo), 12th century Romanesque,
featuring bell tower and external pulpit by Donatello………………………….………………498

Figure 5.38. Donatello, Pulpit (external), 1428-38, marble, mosaic, bronze, wood,
height 210 cm (without canopy), Duomo (Cathedral of San Stefano), Prato ………………..…499

Figure 5.39. Maso di Bartolommeo, Bronze Doors of the New Sacristy, 1446-75, bronze,
420 x 200 cm, Duomo (S. Maria del Fiore), Florence…………………………………..……...500

Figure 5.40. Fra Angelico, Annunciation, early 1430s, tempera on wood, 175 x 180 cm,
Museo Diocesano, Cortona……………………………………………………………………..501

Figure 5.41. Paolo Uccello, Study of Perspective, 1430s, pen and ink, 290 x 241 mm,
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence………………………………………………..………………...502

Figure 5.42. Masolino da Panicale, Founding of Santa Maria Maggiore, 1420s, panel,
144 x 76 cm, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples…….………………………………...503

xx

Figure 5.43. Masaccio, St. Jerome and St. John the Baptist, 1428, egg tempera on poplar,
National Gallery, London………………………………………………………………………504

Figure 5.44. Masolino da Panicale, Annunciation, 1428-30, fresco, Chapel of the Sacrament,
San Clemente, Rome………………………………………………………………….....……...505

Figure 5.45. Masolino da Panicale, Crucifixion (altar wall), 1425-31, fresco,
Castiglione Chapel, San Clemente, Rome……………………………………...………………506

Figure 5.46. Masaccio, Tribute Money, 1426-27, fresco, 255 x 598 cm, Cappella Brancacci,
Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence…………………………………………………………….507

Figure 5.47. Masolino da Panicale, St. Catherine Debates the Philosophers of Alexandria,
1428-30, fresco, San Clemente, Rome……………………………………………...…………..508

Figure 5.48. Masolino da Panicale, Miracle of the Wheel, 1425-31, fresco,
Castiglione Chapel, San Clemente, Rome…………………………………………...………....509

Figure 5.49. Antonio Pollaiulo, Funerary Monument of Sixtus IV, 1484-93. Bronze,
St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome…………………………………………………………...………….510

Figure 5.50. Donatello, Tombstone of Bishop Giovanni Pecci, 1426, marble, 247 x 88 cm,
Duomo, Siena…………………………………………………………………………………...511

Figure 5.51. Donatello, Tomb of Cardinal Rainaldo Brancacci, 1427, marble, height 165 cm
(each caryatid), Sant'Angelo a Nilo, Naples……………………………………………………512

Figure 5.52. Donatello, Cantoria, 1431-39 Marble, 348 x 570 cm,
Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence………………………..………………………………513

Figure 5.53. Donatello, Cantoria, 1431-39 Marble, 348 x 570 cm,
Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence……………..…………………………………………514

Figure 5.54. Paolo Veronese, Paolo Feast in the House of Levi, 1573, Oil on canvas,
555 x 1280 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice……………………………………….……...515

Figure 5.55. Taddeo Gaddi’s, Presentation of the Virgin, fresco, c. 1328,
Baroncelli Chapel of Santa Croce, Florence………………………………………..…………..516

Figure 5.56. Paolo Uccello, Funerary Monument to John Harkwood, fresco, 1436,
Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence……………………………………………..……...517

Figure 5.57. Triumph of Marcus Aurelius, c.161-180, marble, Capitoline Museum, Rome…...518

Figure 5.58. Pisanello, from Drawings of Various “living creatures,” such as Monkeys and
Horses, Paper, Musée du Louvre, Paris………………………………………………………...519

xxi

Figure 5.59. Pisanello, St. George and the Princess of Trebizond, (detail right side), 1436-38,
Fresco, 223 x 620 cm (entire fresco), Pellegrini Chapel, Sant'Anastasia, Verona……………..520

Figure 5.60. Pisanello, Vision St. Eustace, c. 1438-42, 54.8 x 65.5 cm, National Gallery,
London………………………………………………………………………………………….521

Figure 5.61. Lorenzo Monaco, Coronation of the Virgin, 1414, tempera on panel,
4.50 x 3.50m, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence………………………………………………….522

Figure 5.62. Andrea da Firenze’s Christ Bearing the Cross to Calvary, Fresco,
Spanish Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence…………………………….…………………523

Figure 5.63. Giusto de' Menabuoi, Marriage at Cana, 1376-78 Fresco Baptistry, Padua…..…524

Figure 5.64. Nardo di Cione, Paradise, c. 1355, Fresco, Cappella Strozzi,
Santa Maria Novella, Florence…………………………………………………………………525

Figure 5.65. Andrea da Firenze, Way of Salvation, 1365-68, Fresco, Cappella Spagnuolo,
Santa Maria Novella, Florence……………..…………………………………………………..526

Figure 5.66. Amor & Psyche (Roman relief of Hellenistic type), 16th century copy,
present owner unknown………………………………………………………………………...527

Figure 5.67. Donatello, Cavalcanti Annunciation, 1428-35, Church of Santa Croce,
Florence…………………………………………………………………………………………528

Figure 5.68. Fra Angelico, Lamentation, 1425? – 1441, tempera on panel, 105 x 164 cm.,
Museo di San Marco, Florence…………………………………………........…………………529

Figure 5.69. Orcagna (Andrea de Cione), Strozzi Altarpiece, 1354-57, Tempera on wood,
Cappella Strozzi, Santa Maria Novella, Florence……………………………………………....530

Figure 5.70. Lorenzo Monaco, Coronation of the Virgin, 1414, tempera on panel,
4.50 x 3.50 m, Galleria degli Uffizi,Florence…….................………………………………….531

Figure 5.71. Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi (Strozzi Chapel Altarpiece for Santa
Trinita), 1423, Tempera on wood, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence………………………….….532

Figure 5.72. Lorenzo Monaco, Flight into Egypt, 1405-1410, Tempera on Poplar, Lindenau-
Museum, Altenburg, Germany…………………………………………………………………533

Figure 5.73. Gentile, Nativity, 1423, Tempera on Wood, 75 x 32 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi,
Florence…………………………………………………………………………………………534

xxii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work reflects the debts I owe to Walter Liedtke of the Metropolitan Museum of New

York, Maria Conelli of the Brooklyn Academy and Ali MacGraw, all three of whom initially

propelled me into the world of art and art history in all of its periods and cultures, but Italy in

particular. Gary Radke of Syracuse University was and remains my first mentor in academia. At

the Syracuse campus in Florence and in the city itself, Robert Hatfield, Molly Bourne, Barbara

Deimling, Ezio Buzzegoli, Diane Kunzelman, Jonathan Nelson, Rocky Ruggiero, Richard

Goldthwaite, Bruce Edelman, Timothy Verdon, Lauro Martines and the late Gino Corti

encouraged and sustained my inquiries. Joanna Woods-Marsden, Susan Downey, Geoffrey

Simcox, Kathryn McDonnell, Amy Richlin, Brian Walters and Michael Brumbaugh guided my

scholarship at UCLA. I am grateful to my Ph.D. committee, including chair, Charlene

Villaseñor Black, and committee members of the committee, Robert Williams, and Peter Stacey.

Much gratitude is also extended to the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Art

History Department of UCLA for the Fredi Chiapelli Award and Edward A. Dickson History of

Art Fellowships. Lastly, Maria Cristina La Rocca of the University of Padua, Alex Nagel of

NYU and the late Leo Steinberg are among these friends and mentors who inspired and

counseled the investigations and labors of this research.

 

xxiii

VITA

1970 B.A. Speech/Drama
University of North Texas
Denton, Texas

2001 Teaching Assistant
Dept. of Art History
Syracuse University
Florence, Italy

2002-03 Field Trip Instructor
Dept. of Art History
Syracuse University
Florence, Italy

2004 M.A. Art History

Syracuse University
Florence, Italy

Publications

2012 “Reassessment in Gender and Historiography: Donatello’s Bronze David in the Twenty-
First Century.” Artibus et Historiae, No. 65 (XXXIII) 2012.

Presentations

2001 “Death by Crucifixion: Passion and Compassion and the Early Trecento Carved Wood
Crucifix of Pisa.” M.A. Thesis presented at Graduate Symposium on Birth and Death.
Syracuse University in Florence, Italy.

2010 “Donatello’s Bronze David in the Twenty-First Century: Controversy over Homoeroticism
in an Icon.” Paper presented on Gender and Historiography for Renaissance Society of
America Annual Conference in Venice, Italy.

2010 “The American Stereotype in the Mediterranean Muslim World.” Panel for Conference on
Education and Communication in Muslim/American Relations: In commemoration of
President Barak Obama’s Cairo address of 2009 and the opening of the modern Library
of Alexandria.

2011 “Fluvial Influence: Quattrocento Distinctions in Text and Art Regarding Antique River
Gods.” Paper presented on Lost in Translation for Renaissance Society of America
Annual Conference in Montreal, Canada.

xxiv

2011 “Reversal of Standard: Cinquecento Imitation of the Antique River God.” Paper presented
on Art Theories, for Sixteenth Century Society Annual Conference in Ft. Worth Texas.

1

Introduction

Leon Battista Alberti’s De pictura is the earliest treatise on visual art written in humanist

Latin rhetorical prose by an ostensible practitioner of painting (Fig. 0.1).1 We surmise from a

note in Alberti’s hand in his copy of Cicero’s Brutus that he finished De pictura in August 1435,

around twelve months after his first documented visit to Florence, the city from which his family

had been exiled from 1387 to 1428.2 Alberti was Florentine by lineage only. Scholarship places

his birth in Genoa in 1404.3 He studied in Padua and Bologna and worked in Rome before living

in Florence from 1434 to 1436 and again from 1439 to 1441.4 He subsequently accomplished

major works in Mantua, Ferrara, and Rimini, passed time in Venice and Urbino, dying in 1472 in

1 Leon Battista Alberti, Vita anonyma, in “The Life of Leon Battista Alberti by Himself – L.B. Alberti in the Mirror:
An Interpretation of the Vita anonyma with a New Translation,” trans. Renée Neu Watkins, Italian Quarterly 30, no.
117 (1989), 6-7. See also ibid., in Opera Volgere di Leon Battista Alberti per la più Parte Inedite e Tratte dagli
Autografi Annotate e Illustrate, ed. Anicio Bonucci, vol. 1 (Florence: Galileiana, 1843), xc-cviii. For essential
biographical information, see Bonucci, vol. 1, ix-lxxvi; Luigi Passerini, Gli Alberti di Firenze: Genealogia, Storia e
Documenti, vol. 1 (Florence: M. Cellini, 1859); Girolamo Mancini, Vita di Leon Battista Alberti (Florence: Sansoni,
1882); Franco Borsi, Leon Battista Alberti (New York: Harper & Row, 1977); and Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista
Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000). The Vita anonyma mentions
Philodoxeos fabula, De commodis litterarum atque incommodis, Deifira, Ecatomfilea, Intercoenales and Della
famiglia before the “book on painting,” although the last four were not necessarily completed before De pictura. For
all references to De pictura, I cite Alberti, De pictura, in Leon Battista Alberti: On Painting and On Sculpture: The
Latin Texts of ‘De pictura’ and ‘De statua,’ ed. and trans. Cecil Grayson (London: Phaidon, 1972). For Della
pittura, see Alberti, Alberti, Della Pittura: Edizione Critica, ed. Luigi Mallè (Florence: Sansoni, 1950), On Painting,
ed. and trans. John Spencer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), and On Painting: A New Translation and
Critical Edition, ed. Rocco Sinisgalli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). See Grayson, “The Texts of
Alberti’s De pictura,” Italian Studies 23, no. 1 (1968): 71-92. Grayson collated his work from six of twenty-two
surviving Latin manuscripts – all dating from the mid-to-late 15th century. Grayson’s English translation is the first
publication of the Latin text since 1649 in Amsterdam (reprint of the 1540 Basel text). I follow Grayson’s textual
divisions, citing book in Roman numerals and chapter indications in Arabic numbers. As this dissertation deals with
the Latin version and title of De pictura, all titles of Latin works will be given in Latin, although quotations will be
in English with Latin translations in the footnotes.

2 Mancini, Vita, 66. The copy is in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Cod. Lat. 67, cl. XI, ex. 3859, Cicero, Ad
Brutum. The inscription reads: “This Friday, the 20th hour and three quarters I did on the day of 26th of August,
1435, complete the work De pictura, Baptista, Florence.” (Die Verneris ora xx 3/4 quae fuit dies 26, Augusti 1435,
complevi opus De pictura Florentiae, B[aptista]).

3 Passerini,132. See also Mancini, Vita, 30. The assumed date of Alberti’s birth is derived from a note of Genoa,
February 14, of 1404, on the cover of a MS of De re aedificatoria, found in Urbino in the 1480s, now in Florence.

4 For an approximate time line of Alberti’s life see Franco Borsi, 375.

2

Rome where he had resided for several decades.

An Italian text of De pictura entitled Della pittura, was completed, according to a note at

the end of the book, around July 1436.5 Whether Alberti’s 1435 Latin note on the Brutus

referring “opus Picturae Florentiae” refers to his Latin version of the text or his Italian version

of the work is not clear.6 The standard scholarly view, endorsed by Anthony Grafton in his

intellectual biography of Alberti, is that the Latin text came first, in 1435, and that Alberti

amended his Latin treatise in Italian to accommodate those less literate in the ancient language.7

As recently as 2011 Rocco Sinisgalli has argued for the opposite sequence. Alberti’s initial

intention was to write the work in vernacular and, subsequently, hone his precepts in Latin.8

Notwithstanding that debate, this work focuses on explicating the Latin text for reasons that will

be discussed. I thus adhere to Grafton’s and the conventional view.

One dominant historiographical assumption about De pictura is that the book is best

explained as the product of a Florentine intellectual working within that city’s artistic context.

Kenneth Clark, for instance, claimed that the preface to Alberti’s vernacular edition:

… rather implies that what he found there [in Florence] took him by surprise. It seemed reasonable to

suppose that he spent the next two years frequenting the company of artists, and it was from this

experience that, in 1435-6, Della pittura was written.9

Clark’s account continued in hagiographical mode:

… such was the formidable young man who, in the summer of 1434, returned to Florence and resumed his

5 See Grayson, “The Texts,” in On Painting and On Sculpture, 3. See also Spencer, “Sources,” in Leon Battista
Alberti On Painting, 33. Two surviving redacted manuscripts of Della pittura are based upon a third and the most
reliable copy, MS II.IV, 38 in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence.

7 Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti, 97-101.

8 Alberti, On Painting, ed. Sinisgalli, 9.

9 Kenneth Clark, “The Literature of Art,” review of Lorenzo Ghiberti by Richard Krautheimer, Burlington Magazine
100, no. 662 (May, 1958), 178.

3

friendship with the circle of humanist artists. After less than a year spent in studying their work and

listening to their conversation he was prepared to give theoretical shape to what he had learnt.10

Here Clark refers to Alberti’s ostensible homage to Masaccio (Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di

Simone, 1421-1428) Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, 1386-1466), Filippo

Brunelleschi (1377-1446), Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) and Luca della Robbia (1400-1482) in

his prologue to the vernacular Della pittura (1436). The relevant passage reads:

But after I came back here to this most beautiful of cities from the long exile in which we Albertis have

grown old, I recognized in many, but above all in you, Filippo, and in our great friend the sculptor

Donatello and in the others, Nencio, Luca and Masaccio, a genius for every laudable enterprise in no way

inferior to any of the ancients who gained fame in these arts.11

In attempts to contextualize his book within the values and precepts of Florentine art, previous

scholarship on the visual sources informing De pictura have suggested purely local Tuscan

works such as: Donatello’s predella relief of his St. George for the Or San Michelle (Figs. 0.2

and 0.3); his Feast of Herod for the Baptistery of Siena (Fig. 0.4); Ghiberti’s panels on the east

doors of the Florence baptistery (1425-1452, Fig. 0.5); or Masaccio’s Trinity in the church of

Santa Maria Novella in Florence (Fig. 0.6) and St. Peter cycle in the Brancacci Chapel. While it

is certainly true that historians must account for this praise of Florentine artists and their works,

there are methods of doing so which may reduce the relative importance of Alberti’s brief

experience of local Florentine environs. Alberti may have encountered the works of both

Masaccio and Donatello in Rome, for example, before he ever saw anything of their oeuvre in

10 Ibid., Leon Battista Alberti On Painting: Annual Italian Lecture of the British Academy (London: Cumberledge,
1944), 4.

11 Grayson, Leon Battista Alberti: On Painting and On Sculpture, 4, 32-33. “Ma poi che io dal lungo essilio in
quale siamo noi Alberti invecchiati, qui fui in questa nostra sopra l’altre ornatissima patria ridutto, compresi in
molti ma prima in te, Filippo, e in quel nostro amicissimo Donato scultore, e in quegli altri Nencio e Luca e
Masaccio, essere a ogni lodata cosa ingegno da non posporli a qual si sia stato antique e famoso in queste arti.”

4

Florence in 1434, an idea also postulated by Richard Krautheimer.12 In addition, the “Masaccio”

to whom Alberti refers may refer, not the seminal painter of early-Quattrocento realism, but to a

sculptor who, alongside the other artists heralded in the passage, worked on the Duomo in

Florence. Both of these arguments will also be developed in chapter 5 addressing Alberti’s

influences in Rome.

In any event, despite Clark’s assertions, to accept De pictura as the result of only twelve

months in Florence is implausible. In his 1972 edition of the book, Grayson argued that, since

Alberti arrived in Florence with the papal legate only around June of 1434 and De pictura was

completed in 1435, the book is neither the result of a single year’s residence nor the “encounter

with Florence and her artists.”13 In 2011, furthermore, Francesco Furlan recently minimized the

importance of a Florentine context altogether regarding Alberti’s life:

The fact is that it appears that there is no evidence of a physical or emotional or mental connection of

Alberti to Florence, any more than to Venice, Ferrara, Bologna, Mantua, Rome …14

As Furlan reminds us, Alberti did not consider himself a Florentine at all, even after having lived

there. In De iciarchia (1468), the last surviving work he ever penned, Alberti wrote:

Of these customs of land and city of Florence, it never happened to me to encounter them elsewhere or get

to know them. I'm like a stranger (to Florence). Rarely would I go there and little (time) would I stay...15

In fact, Alberti admitted in his own Vita anonyma (1437-38?) that, when writing the first book of

his social treatise, Della famiglia (c. 1435) in Rome in ninety days, he attempted to write it in

12 Richard Krautheimer, Lorenzo Ghiberti (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 319, n. 20.

13 Grayson, “Introduction,” in Leon Battista Alberti: On Painting and On Sculpture, 8-10.

14 Francesco Furlan, “Per Un Ritratto dell’Alberti,” Albertiana 14 (2011): 43-44. “Ma il fatto si e che l'Alberti non
pare e non risulta ne materialmente ne forse idealmente legato a Firenze più di quanto non lo sia a Venezia, a
Ferrara e Bologna o Mantova, a Roma....”

15 Alberti, De iciarchia, trans. Grayson (Bari: Laterza, 1966), 11. “Di questi costumi della terra [la città di Firenze]
mai accadde a me altrove ragiorne; e sonci come forestiere, raro ci venni e poco ci dimorai.”

5

Tuscan “to help those who were ignorant of Latin,” but adds that:

… the language was rough and unpolished and could hardly be called Tuscan; for the long exile of the

Albertis meant that he had not been raised in the language and it was hard for him to write it elegantly and

properly when he was unaccustomed to writing it at all.16

Even the Florentine language appeared alien to him. Alberti’s aim in De pictura, however, was

not to impress local Italians in a painter’s classroom, workshop or studio but, on the contrary, to

educate a cultural elite who had studied the classics and would view his Latin work as a refined

neo-classical argument designed to lift the status of painting to be equal to that of the liberal arts.

The aim of this dissertation is to follow those recent historians – Grayson, Grafton, and

now Furlan – who insist on the crucial importance of Alberti’s education and early career, prior

to his arrival in Florence. In so doing, the lines of transmission of ideas in his education in both

textual and visual art help us elucidate the fundamental sources of Alberti’s theories and

prescriptions for painting in his seminal text. Even if we allow the possibility, notwithstanding

the absence of any evidence to support it, that Alberti returned to Florence in 1428 – the year of

termination of his family’s exile – before his first documented presence in the city in 1434,

scholarship remains in need of an extensive reconstruction of Alberti’s intellectual and artistic

education in his pre-Florentine years. This dissertation will provide a more profound account of

both the intellectual and visual milieu in which Alberti passed his formative years in the two

decades prior to De pictura’s completion. In so doing, the research will refine understanding of

the sources in the book’s development. This process, however, demands turning away from the

Florentine Renaissance and focusing on three other centers of intellectual and artistic endeavor,

which were crucial in shaping the terms of Alberti’s treatise: Padua, Bologna and Rome.

16 Ibid., Vita anonyma, ed. Bonucci, 94. See also ibid., trans. Watkins, 8. “Scripsit praeterea et affinium suorum
gratia, ut linguae latinae ignaris prodesset, patrio sermone annum ante trigesimum aetatis suae etruscos libros,
primum, secundum, ac tertium de Familia, quos Romae die nonagesimo, quam inchoarat, absolvit; sed inelimatos,
et asperos, neque usquequaque etruscos.”

6

My work, consequently, is divided into five chapters. The first three are devoted to Padua.

The initial chapter will paint the political and intellectual backdrop of Padua before Alberti’s

arrival. The second chapter will elucidate the context of Alberti’s humanist education and the

third chapter the visual sources in Padua. The fourth and fifth chapters will then explore the

intellectual and visual material which Alberti either certainly encountered, or may have

encountered, in Bologna and Rome, respectively. Therefore, after the initial chapter – a

discussion on the broad shape of Padua’s humanist evolution – each of the remaining four

chapters examines the intellectual and art-historical contexts of Alberti’s early years: during his

time in Padua, from 1414 to perhaps 1421; in Bologna, from 1421 to perhaps 1428; and his early

employment in Rome from 1431 to 1434. Each chapter begins with discussion of the dates of

Alberti’s movements and offers preliminary contextual remarks regarding the relevant historical,

institutional and artistic developments in each of the three cities. The chapter is then divided into

an assessment of the texts, which either certainly informed or may have informed Alberti’s work,

as well as the visual material that Alberti may have seen. Those textual and visual materials, in

turn, divide into two groups: the ancient and the post-classical, either medieval or Renaissance.

The sum of the chapters and conclusion will demonstrate how these materials are endemic to De

pictura. By correlating context, text and art to the book’s prescriptions that painting should

“hold and charm the eyes and minds of spectators,” this dissertation will demonstrate how these

early sources generated the concepts, framework and vocabulary of De pictura.17

In sum, this work argues that Alberti began with notes, observations of art, mathematics,

and antique figures – both legendary and real – as well as text, descriptions and vocabulary.

Thus, holding with Grayson and others that the Latin manuscript, De pictura, preceded the

17 Alberti, De pictura, III.52, 94-95. “Finis pictoris laudem, gratiam et benivolentiam vel magis quam divitias ex
opere adipisci. Id quidem assequetur pictor dum eius pictura oculos et animos spectantium tenebit atque movebit.”

7

vernacular version by a year, and that the tract was not the product of twelve months in Florence,

my work views De pictura as the final solidification of these studies and observances gleaned

from and gestated in Padua, Bologna and Rome. The culmination of this knowledge would be a

Latin text serving Alberti’s ultimate goal – to raise painting as equal in humanist status to the

liberal arts. My work, therefore, presents a forensic reconstruction of textual and visual sources

that, by more fully organizing Alberti’s intellectual and artistic progression before 1434, will re-

evaluate the impact of his early career upon his evolution as an art theorist. Moreover, as a work

of interdisciplinary research, this study means to further conjoin intellectual with visual art

history and thus offer a clearer comprehension of Alberti to both disciplines.

Defining the Context: Two Polemics Regarding De pictura in Historical Time

Erwin Panofsky argued the difficulty in obtaining a correct understanding of a work of art

without “having divined, as it were, its historical locus… we subject our practical experience to a

controlling principle which can be called the history of style.”18 Panofsky’s basic point regards

the importance of historical context in the act of interpretation. Two persistent polemics

surround De pictura’s interpretation and use of classical aesthetics within historical context. The

primary debate regards the extent of mutual influence between humanism and the visual arts.

Recent scholarship aims to correct the common notion that the two disciplines were intertwined

during the early Quattrocento.19 The instructional manual Il libro dell’arte, penned in Italian by

Cennino da
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1. first scholars to stress Padua as a center of humanism prior to Petrarch. 110 George Holmes
2.
3. attends to Paduan intellectual influences in so far as he holds that Petrarch, Guarino da Verona
4.
5. (1374-1460), and Vergerio constituted the apogee of humanism before Florence.111 Barry M.
6.
7. Katz’s 1977 work, Leon Battista Alberti and the Humanist Theory of the Arts, produces a
8.
9. composite of intellectual influences upon Alberti’s significance as both theorist and humanist.112
10.
11.
12. 106 See Giuseppe Billanovich, Petrarca Leterato: Lo Scrittoio de Petrarca (Rome: Edizione di Storia e Letteratura,
13. 1947), “Petrarch and the Textual Tradition of Livy,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14, no. 3/4
14. (1951): 137-208, “I Primi Umanisti e le Tradizioni dei Classici Latini” Discorsi Universitari, no. 14 (1953),
15. Petrarch e Padova (Padua: Attenore, 1976). See also Guido Billanovich, Il Preumanesimo Padovano, (Vicenza:
16. Pozza, 1976).
17.
18. 107 See Skinner, 3-53.
19.
20. 108 Witt, The Two Latin Cultures. See also ibid., In the Footsteps of the Ancients.
21.
22. 109 McManamon, Pierpaolo Vergerio the Elder. See also Michael Katchmer, “Biography of Pier Paolo Vergerio,” in
23. Pier Paolo Vergerio and the Paulus, a Latin Comedy (New York: P. Lang, 1999), 1-75.
24.
25. 110 Roberto Weiss, The Dawn of Humanism in Italy (New York: Haskell House, 1947). See also ibid., The
26. Renaissance Rediscovery of antiquity (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1969).
27.
28. 111 Holmes, 1-36.
29.
30. 112 See Katz.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36. 33
37.
38. Hope, Wright, and Jarzombek examine the structural aspects of De pictura and their relationship
39.
40. to classical texts. 113 Stefano Borsi discusses Alberti’s possible access to the antique monuments
41.
42. in Rome by way of the antiquarian work of Flavio Biondo. 114 Samuel Edgerton, in Renaissance
43.
44. Rediscovery of Linear Perspective and his more recent re-evaluation, The Mirror, the Window
45.
46. and the Telescope, produce a lucid analyses of the early 1400s evolution of Euclidian optics and
47.
48. fixed perspective within social and religious context.115 Rensselaer W. Lee regarded Alberti’s
49.
50. ideals of beauty and morality as originating in poetry. Others, like Spencer, view him as a neo-
51.
52. classical, humanist rhetorician, originating in assimilation of ideas from Cicero and Quintilian.116
53.
54. Both Paul F. Grendler and Paul Oskar Kristeller have given us comprehensive works on
55.
56. Renaissance education, pertinent to reconstruction of Alberti’s early years, for example
57.
58. Grendler’s Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600 and The
59.
60. Universities of the Italian Renaissance in 2002.117 In addition, Olaf Pedersen’s 1997 book, The
61.
62. First Universities: Studium Generale and the Origins of University Education in Europe,
63.
64. reconstructs early-Quattrocento mathematics and optics curricula and its subsequent humanist

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1. his birth in Genoa in 1404.3 He studied in Padua and Bologna and worked in Rome before living
2.
3. in Florence from 1434 to 1436 and again from 1439 to 1441.4 He subsequently accomplished
4.
5. major works in Mantua, Ferrara, and Rimini, passed time in Venice and Urbino, dying in 1472 in
6.
7.
8. 1 Leon Battista Alberti, Vita anonyma, in “The Life of Leon Battista Alberti by Himself – L.B. Alberti in the Mirror:
9. An Interpretation of the Vita anonyma with a New Translation,” trans. Renée Neu Watkins, Italian Quarterly 30, no.
10. 117 (1989), 6-7. See also ibid., in Opera Volgere di Leon Battista Alberti per la più Parte Inedite e Tratte dagli
11. Autografi Annotate e Illustrate, ed. Anicio Bonucci, vol. 1 (Florence: Galileiana, 1843), xc-cviii. For essential
12. biographical information, see Bonucci, vol. 1, ix-lxxvi; Luigi Passerini, Gli Alberti di Firenze: Genealogia, Storia e
13. Documenti, vol. 1 (Florence: M. Cellini, 1859); Girolamo Mancini, Vita di Leon Battista Alberti (Florence: Sansoni,
14. 1882); Franco Borsi, Leon Battista Alberti (New York: Harper & Row, 1977); and Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista
15. Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000). The Vita anonyma mentions
16. Philodoxeos fabula, De commodis litterarum atque incommodis, Deifira, Ecatomfilea, Intercoenales and Della
17. famiglia before the “book on painting,” although the last four were not necessarily completed before De pictura. For
18. all references to De pictura, I cite Alberti, De pictura, in Leon Battista Alberti: On Painting and On Sculpture: The
19. Latin Texts of ‘De pictura’ and ‘De statua,’ ed. and trans. Cecil Grayson (London: Phaidon, 1972). For Della
20. pittura, see Alberti, Alberti, Della Pittura: Edizione Critica, ed. Luigi Mallè (Florence: Sansoni, 1950), On Painting,
21. ed. and trans. John Spencer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), and On Painting: A New Translation and
22. Critical Edition, ed. Rocco Sinisgalli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). See Grayson, “The Texts of
23. Alberti’s De pictura,” Italian Studies 23, no. 1 (1968): 71-92. Grayson collated his work from six of twenty-two
24. surviving Latin manuscripts – all dating from the mid-to-late 15th century. Grayson’s English translation is the first
25. publication of the Latin text since 1649 in Amsterdam (reprint of the 1540 Basel text). I follow Grayson’s textual
26. divisions, citing book in Roman numerals and chapter indications in Arabic numbers. As this dissertation deals with
27. the Latin version and title of De pictura, all titles of Latin works will be given in Latin, although quotations will be
28. in English with Latin translations in the footnotes.
29.
30. 2 Mancini, Vita, 66.

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1. that Alberti was attempting to give painting a scientific basis. Krautheimer, Clark and Blunt
2.
3. view Alberti in the twentieth century as an early pioneer of the inclusion of visual arts within
4.
5. humanities by reason of the humanist’s instruction in mathematical aesthetics.103
6.
7. Latest monographs include Franco Borsi’s methodological analysis, Leon Battista
8.
9. Alberti: The Complete Works (1977).104 Grafton’s monograph, Leon Battista Alberti: Master
10.
11. Builder of the Renaissance, is the most recent and insightful account of Alberti by a leading
12.
13. Renaissance intellectual historian.105 Although emphasizing the general background of Alberti
14.
15. in Padua, Bologna and Rome, both Borsi and Grafton focus, for the most part, on the humanist’s
16.
17. works of architecture, which, in the face of dearth of research on Alberti as a painter, remains the
18.
19.
20. 101 Andrea Gloria, Documenti Inediti Intorno al Petrarca, con Alcuni Cenni della Casa di lui in Arquà e Della
21. Reggia dei da Carrara in Padova (Padua: Minerva, 1878). See also ibid., I Sigilli della Università di Padova dal
22. 1222 al 1797: Nota con Documenti (Padua: Minerva, 1896) and Monumenti della Università di Padova (1318-
23. 1405): Raccolti da Andrea Gloria, 2 vols. (Padua: Forni, 1888).
24.
25. 102 Jacob Burkhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance, trans. C.G.C. Middlemore, eds, Peter Martin and Peter
26. Burke (London: Penguin Classics, 1990). See also Julius von Schlosser, Ein Künstlerproblem der Renaissance: L.B.
27. Alberti (Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1929).
28.
29. 103 Krautheimer, Lorenzo Ghiberti and ibid., “Alberti and Vitruvius,” in Studies in Western Art: Acts of the
30. Twentieth International Congress of the History of Arts, vol. 2 of The Renaissance and Mannerism, eds. Millard
31. Meiss, George Kubler, et. al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963). See also Clark, Leon Battista Alberti
32. On Painting, and Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy: 1450-1600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).
33.
34. 104 See Franco Borsi.
35.
36. 105 Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43. 32
44.
45. strongest foundation for the study of the humanist’s surviving artistic work. The study of
46.
47. humanism in Padua depends upon the fundamental scholarship of Giuseppe and Guido
48.
49. Billanovich.106 Reconstruction of the humanist political thought in Italy at the time is found in
50.
51. Quentin Skinner’s Foundations of Modern Political Thought.107 More recently, Ronald Witt’s
52.
53. The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy, as well
54.
55. as his In the Footsteps of the Ancients present the most comprehensive analysis of Padua’s
56.
57. intellectual culture.108 Recent work on the central humanist figure of Vergerio include both John
58.
59. McManamon’s Pier Paolo Vergerio: The Humanist as Orator and Michael Katchmer’s analysis
60.
61. of Vergerio’s connections to the late Quattrocento comedy, Paulus.109 Roberto Weiss, for
62.
63. example in his Dawn of Humanism in Italy and Renaissance Rediscovery of Antiquity, was of the

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1. Doctor of Philosophy in Art History
2.
3. University of California, Los Angeles, 2014
4.
5. Professor Charlene Villaseñor Black, Chair
6.
7.
8.
9. De pictura by Leon Battista Alberti (1404?-1472) is the earliest surviving treatise on
10.
11. visual art written in humanist Latin by an ostensible practitioner of painting. The book
12.
13. represents a definitive moment of cohesion between the two most conspicuous cultural
14.
15. developments of the early Renaissance, namely, humanism and the visual arts. This dissertation
16.
17. reconstructs the intellectual and visual environments in which Alberti moved before he entered
18.
19. Florence in the curia of Pope Eugenius IV in 1434, one year before the recorded date of
20.
21. completion of De pictura. For the two decades prior to his arrival in Florence, from 1414 to
22.
23. 1434, Alberti resided in Padua, Bologna, and Rome. Examination of specific textual and visual
24.
25. material in those cities – sources germane to Alberti’s humanist and visual development, and
26.
27. thus to the ideas put forth in De pictura – has been insubstantial. This dissertation will therefore
28.
29. present an investigation into the sources available to Alberti in Padua, Bologna and Rome, and
30.
31. will argue that this material helped to shape the prescriptions in Alberti’s canonical Renaissance
32.
33. tract. By more fully accounting for his intellectual and artistic progression before his arrival in
34.
35. Florence, this forensic reconstruction aims to fill a gap in our knowledge of Alberti’s formative
36.
37. years and thereby underline impact of his early career upon his development as an art theorist.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43. iii
44.
45. This dissertation of Peter Francis Weller is approved.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50. Peter Stacey
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58. Robert Williams
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66. Charlene Villaseñor Black, Committee Chair
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82. University of California, Los Angeles
83.
84. 2014
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92. iv
93.
94. Dedicated to my extraordinary wife, Sheri and beautiful son, Teddy, both of whom never allowed
95.
96. reading Latin in bed;
97.
98. To my own personal ‘Pietro Bembo,’ Mark Hime of Biblioctopus;
99.
100. and to Stan and Brian Shuster of the Grand Havana Room who loaned me the “office” for seven
101.
102. years to complete the bulk of this toil.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110. v
111.
112. TABLE OF CONTENTS
113.
114.
115.
116. Abstract……………………………………………………...…………………………………….ii
117.
118. Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………...iv
119.
120. List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………..ix
121.
122. Acknowledgments………………………...……………………………………………………xxii
123.
124. Vita…………………………………………………………………………………………….xxiii
125.
126. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..…1
127.
128. Chapter 1. Padua: Historical and Intellectual Context…………………………………………...39
129.
130. Liberation and Return to Commune (1256-1318)…………………………………….…42
131.
132. Commune Demise and Rise of the Carrara (1310-1338)………………………………...44
133.
134. Carrara Dynasty to Venetian Dominance (1338-1405)……………………………….....45
135.
136. Paduan Intellectual Culture: (c. 1250-1400)……………………………………………..47
137.
138. Petrarch and the “Studia Humanitatis”…………………………………………………..64
139.
140. Pier Paolo Vergerio and Rhetoric of the Court…………………………………………..80
141.
142. Florentine Humanism in Paduan Context……………………………………………..…88
143.
144. Chapter 2. Alberti in Padua I: Intellectual Education…………………………………………....93

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1. 1420s by the patronage of Ferrara, Mantua, Milan and Florence, David Drogin argues that a
2.
3. deficiency in study falsely suggests Bologna languishing in a “state of provincial mediocrity.”79
4.
5. For instance, in 1989 James Beck asserted that: “Alberti the humanist was first and foremost a
6.
7. writer, trained in letters, in Latin… in the classics, and in canon law, at the universities of Padua
8.
9. and Bologna.”80 Alberti neither attended Padua’s studium, and, furthermore, although he did
10.
11. attended, no document attests that he ever was graduated from Bologna’s either. As there is no
12.
13. clear record of Alberti’s movements in this pivotal period of the 1420s, a consideration of the
14.
15. possible textual and visual influence on De pictura during these years is warranted.
16.
17.
18. 77 Benjamin Kohl, Padua Under the Carrara: 1318 – 1405 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 329-
19. 336. See also R.G.G. Mercer, The Teaching of Gasparino Barzizza: with Special Reference to his Place in Paduan
20. Humanism (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1979), 21, and Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti, 39-
21. 42. Barzizza had served as the private tutor for the Barbaro family in Venice in 1412. He was supported by the
22. Venetian podestà in Padua and may have had a continuing access to the room as well as other works by Altichiero.
23.
24. 78 Alberti, Commentarium Philodoxeos fabula, in Bonucci, Opere Volgari, vol.1, cxxiii. After Lorenzo’s, death, he
25. studied canon law in Bologna. (“Mortua Laurentio Alberto patre meo, cum ipse apud Bonoium iuri pontificio opeam
26. darem, in ea disciplina enitebar ita proficere, ut meis essem carior, et nostrae domui ornamento.”)
27.
28. 79 David Drogin, “Art, Patronage, and Civic Identities in Renaissance Bologna,” in The Court Cities of Northern
29. Italy, ed. Charles M. Rosenberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 244.
30.
31. 80 James Beck, “Leon Battista Alberti and the Night Sky at San Lorenzo,” Artibus et Historiae 10, no. 19 (1989), 13.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38. 26
39.
40. Intellectual Context
41.
42. Mancini and further scholarship also maintained that Alberti’s studies at that city’s
43.
44. university initiated De pictura’s precepts for perspective.81 Given that as the documents
45.
46. regarding that period are lost, and no research to date has delivered Alberti’s precise curriculum
47.
48. at the university during his years there we have no record of his studies, this assumption is highly
49.
50. problematic. Despite the lines of transmission, which will be addressed, of Alberti honing
51.
52. geometric skills that may have begun in Padua. Although Alberti encountered the Institutio as
53.
54. early as 1417 at Barzizza’s school, his acquaintance with Quintilian’s rhetoric matured in
55.
56. Bologna after Poggio’s copy of the work was circulated in universities.82 Furthermore, Alberti’s
57.
58. play, Philodoxeos fabula (early 1420s) finished in Bologna, as well as his second treatise, De
59.
60. commodis litterarum atque incommodis (late 1420s), emphasize the humanist goal of personal
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UT PIcTURA POESIS: A LA PINTURA,
DE RAFAEL ALBERTI1

UT PICTURA POESIS: A LA PINTURA, BY RAFAEL ALBERTI

Almudena DEL OLMO ITURRIARTE
Universidad de las Islas Baleares

almudena.delolmo@uib.es

Resumen: A la pintura (1945-1967), de Rafael Alberti, es un ejercicio
de écfrasis y es, ante todo, un homenaje a la pintura, primera vocación
del poeta, a la que vuelve como otro paraíso perdido para defenderse de
la barbarie de la historia y para expresar a través de la palabra poética su
afirmación vitalista de las artes. Este artículo estudia el sentido del libro,
analiza su estructura y ofrece una visión panorámica de los pintores a los
que Alberti dedica poemas-homenaje, profundizando en algunos casos
para valorar los distintos usos ecfrásticos.

Palabras clave: Alberti. Poesía. Pintura. Écfrasis.

Abstract: A la pintura (1945-1967), by Rafael Alberti, is an excercise in
ecphrasis and, primarily, an homage to painting, the first vocation of the
poet, to which he returns as another lost paradise to defend himself from the
barbarism of history and to express his vitalist affirmation of arts through
poetry. This paper analyses the meaning and structure of A la pintura and

1. Este trabajo ha sido realizado en el marco del proyecto de investigación “La poesía hispánica con-
temporánea como documento histórico: historia e ideología” (FFI2016-79802-P), financiado por el Ministerio
de Economía y Competitividad (Gobierno de España) para el período 2017-2020.

© UNED. Revista Signa 27 (2018), págs. 263-292 263

ALMUDENA DEL OLMO ITURRIARTE

© UNED. Revista Signa 27 (2018), págs. 263-292264

offers a panoramic view of the painters to whom he pays homage-poems,
deepening in some cases to study the different uses of the ecphrasis.

Key Words: Alberti. Poetry. Painting. Ecphrasis.

1. RAFAEL ALBERTI, EL POETA QUE QUISO SER PINTOR

1917 es clave en la biografía de Rafael. Su padre tiene que liquidar
el negocio de vinos y coñacs y toda la familia se traslada a Madrid. El
sentimiento de pérdida de lo que El Puerto de Santa María representa se
instala en Rafael, que culpabiliza a su padre de esa especie de expulsión
del paraíso. Unos años más tarde la nostalgia por el mar cristalizará en
Marinero en tierra (1924). Pero en 1917 Alberti aún no sabe que es poeta.
Lo recuerda en el primer libro de sus memorias La arboleda perdida:
“Pocos adolescentes habrán estado tan convencidos como yo a mis
quince años, de que su verdadera vocación eran las artes del dibujo y la
pintura” (Alberti, 1998: 113). Cuando en mayo de 1917 Rafael llega a
Madrid, gracias a la promesa de terminar sus interrumpidos estudios de
bachillerato, le premian con unas pesetas con las que compra una caja
de colores al óleo y un caballete para pintar al aire libre. Falsificando sus
notas sistemáticamente para mostrárselas a su padre, Rafael jamás llega a
cumplir esa promesa y, en vez de ir a las clases, corre al Casón del Buen
Retiro para dibujar “academias”, dice, y cuando ya ha copiado en papel y
carbonilla todas las escayolas que reproducen las grandes esculturas de la
Victoria de Samotracia, del Discóbolo, el Laoconte o la Venus de Milo,
se atreve a cambiar el escenario por el Museo del Prado. Acostumbrado
a las malas reproducciones de los grandes pintores vistas en casa de sus
abuelos y de su tía Lola, Alberti, fascinado, descubre en el Prado dos cosas
fundamentalmente. La primera, el color, y, la segunda, que en la pintura
clásica el religioso no era el único tema. Así explica su sorpresa:

¡De qué violento modo el inmenso salón central del
Prado me cambió aquella pueblerina idea! Ni siquiera
la pintura española que ocupaba parte de él se atenía a
esa temática, aunque eso sí, la gravedad melancólica de

265

UT PICTURA POESIS: A LA PINTURA, DE RAFAEL ALBERTI

© UNED. Revista Signa 27 (2018), págs. 263-292

su tono contrastara, hasta hacerlo aún más triste, con el
de la locura rutilante de Rubens y la alegría melodiosa
de los venecianos. Y comprendí que, aun a pesar de los
alados grises, platas, azulados y rosas de Velázquez, de
las nubosidades celestes de Murillo, los azufres candentes
del Greco, los marfiles y blancos de Zurbarán y el poderío
cromático de Goya, mis ojos y mi sangre, todo yo pertenecía
por entero a aquel mundo de áurea y verde paganía, de quien
Tiziano, sobre los grandes otros –¡oh Tiépolo!–, se llevaba
la palma. Él más que nadie, por su sentido perfilado de lo
luminoso, me hizo confirmar luego, de manera definitiva, la
pertenencia de mis raíces a las civilizaciones de lo azul y lo
blanco (Alberti, 1998: 115-116).

En el Museo del Prado recibe a novias y amigos, allí copia incansable
las obras de los grandes pintores y, sobre todo, mira para comprender una
realidad que se le muestra extraordinariamente rica. Desde 1917 y hasta la
insurrección militar de 1936, Alberti considera el Prado su “gran vivienda”
y lo primero que hace al regresar del exilio es volver de nuevo al Museo.
Conviene recordar asimismo su intervención junto a María Teresa León
para intentar salvar piezas importantes de los fondos del Prado durante el
asedio de Madrid. Obras como Las Meninas, que parten hacia Ginebra. Es
interesante a este respecto la obra dramática Noche de guerra en el Museo
del Prado (1931). Pero, sea como sea, lo cierto es que en 1920 su vocación
cambia de forma irrevocable ya, precisamente, por la muerte inesperada de
su padre y el dolor que siente:

El clavo oscuro que parecía pasarme las paredes del pecho
me lo ordenaba, me lo estaba exigiendo a desgarrones.
Entonces, saqué un lápiz y comencé a escribir. Era realmente
mi primer poema […]. Desde aquella noche seguí haciendo
versos. Mi vocación poética había comenzado. Así, a los
pies de la muerte […] (Alberti, 1998: 153).

A partir de ese momento, Rafael Alberti explica cómo las líneas y los
colores le resultan insuficientes y concluye: “Me prometí olvidarme de mi
primera vocación. Quería solamente ser poeta. Y lo quería con furia […]”

ALMUDENA DEL OLMO ITURRIARTE

© UNED. Revista Signa 27 (2018), págs. 263-292266

(Alberti, 1998: 162).

2. REGRESO A LA PINTURA POR EL VERSO

Estas circunstancias biográficas son importantes para comprender
lo que significa el libro A la pintura2. De entre los muchos caminos de ida
y vuelta que Rafael Alberti emprende en su vida a golpe siempre de unas
circunstancias históricas atroces tanto en España como en Europa, A la
pintura se convierte en uno de los caminos de regreso que le es dado al
poeta por el verso. El libro en su conjunto es un homenaje a tanta belleza
contenida en los límites de los lienzos o de las pinturas murales o de los
frescos; homenaje sostenido a través de un ejercicio de écfrasis arrebatado
de entusiasmo plástico y verbal. Alberti se aplica a ensayar los principios
de la écfrasis –Ut pictura poesis– resolviendo en palabra poética tantas
y tantas imágenes pictóricas acumuladas por el tiempo y guardadas en
su retina (González, 1990). Pero más allá, tal como ha sido reiterado por
la crítica, en 1945 –es decir, al terminar la II Guerra Mundial y como
“una cantata contra la barbarie”3–, A la pintura significa para Rafael, la
posibilidad de volver. Volver desde la memoria a su primera vocación,
volver a la que fue su casa de juventud, volver a ese recinto que tanta belleza
y descubrimientos atesorara para el muchacho en 1917: “la nostalgia del
Museo del Prado […] se me concretó en un libro de poemas […] que me
hizo volver a la experimentación de los colores y la línea, pero esta vez
entremezclándolos con la palabra, es decir, con el verso” (Alberti, 1987:
177).

A la pintura, que termina por subtitularse Poema del color y la línea,
está dedicado a Pablo Picasso. Tiene una primera edición4 en 1945 con
ilustraciones al cuidado de Attilio Rossi y un conjunto de doce textos:
seis sonetos dedicados a distintos elementos del arte de la pintura que se
alternan con seis poemas-homenaje a “Leonardo”, “Veronés”, “El Greco”,
“Rubens”, “Goya” y “Picasso”. Al mismo tiempo Alberti comienza a
realizar numerosas exposiciones en Argentina y Uruguay de lo que él

2. Como visiones de conjunto ver Guerrero Ruiz (1989) y García Jambrina (2003).
3. El subtítulo con que se publica A la pintura en su primera edición de 1945 es Cantata de la línea
y el color.
4. Sobre la historia editorial ver Morales Raya (1985) y la “Noticia” que incluye una recensión bi-
bliográfica en Siles, ed. (2006: 755-778). Todas las citas de A la pintura están tomadas de esta misma edición:
106-219.

267

UT PICTURA POESIS: A LA PINTURA, DE RAFAEL ALBERTI

© UNED. Revista Signa 27 (2018), págs. 263-292

denomina “liricografías” o “liricogramas”, es decir, “poesía visiva”
como se llamó después: experimentaciones varias con los colores y la
línea, entremezclados con la palabra del verso, pero por el valor de la
representación visual de las letras más que por el significado5. En 1948 el
libro experimenta una notable ampliación –se incluyen ya todos los poemas
excepto los de “Corot”, “Gauguin” (que aparecen en la edición de 1953)
y “Miró” (recogido en la de 1968) –, fijándose además su estructura. En
1953 el desarrollo más llamativo del conjunto viene dado por un conjunto
final de “Nuevos poemas” dedicados a artistas plásticos contemporáneos
hispanoamericanos –argentinos, sobre todo–, españoles e italianos con
los que Alberti ha mantenido relaciones diversas, tanto personales como
políticas (Lorenzo Rivera, 1985). Como se ha mencionado, el poema
“Miró” se añade en la edición de 1968, que sirve también para la acotación
temporal que termina por diseñar la peripecia compositiva del conjunto:
1945-1967. No obstante, hay que añadir que en 1978 Alberti vuelve a
editar el libro con la adición de algún poema más que, un poco después,
va a incluir en otro de sus poemarios, Fustigada luz (1980), entre ellos la
serie titulada “Maravillas con variaciones acrósticas en el jardín de Miró”.
Este repaso editorial importa, entre otras cosas, por lo que implica: el
homenaje A la pintura va a sostenerlo Alberti a lo largo de 35 años. Si en
1945 el libro supone la posibilidad de volver a su vocación inicial, tratando
de defenderse además de tanto horror –la guerra de España, el exilio, la
guerra de Europa, el exilio otra vez–, en el transcurso de esos 35 años la
pintura, a través del verso, parece convertirse para Alberti en una forma
de resistencia y en un lugar, ya permanente, de residencia en la tierra.
Porque, además, la reflexión sobre la pintura ya no la abandonará Alberti,
prolongándose en el tiempo en libros posteriores como Roma, peligro para
caminantes, Los 8 nombres de Picasso, etc.

3. A LA PINTURA (POEMA DEL cOLOR Y LA LíNEA) (1945-
1967)

A la pintura (Poema del color y la línea) es un libro muy sencillo
estructuralmente. Lo abre un tríptico de poemas agrupados bajo una fecha:

5. Para la relación entre poesía-pintura o pintura-poesía en la obra de Rafael Alberti ver Colinas
(1977), Guerrero Ruiz (1991), García Montero (1991), García de la Concha (1995) y Corredor-Matheos (1999).

ALMUDENA DEL OLMO ITURRIARTE

© UNED. Revista Signa 27 (2018), págs. 263-292268

1917, es decir, cuando Alberti se traslada a Madrid y con su vocación
de pintor a cuestas descubre el Prado. Los tres textos suponen una
rememoración de los años de adolescencia y juventud. De acuerdo con
el subtítulo (Poema de color y la línea), el primero de ellos está dedicado
al descubrimiento de los colores y al copiado de paisajes del natural, y el
segundo, al descubrimiento de la línea y al copiado academicista de las
escayolas del Casón. Así empieza:

Mil novecientos diecisiete.
Mi adolescencia: la locura
por una caja de pintura,
un lienzo en blanco, un caballete.

El tercero de estos textos arranca nombrando la gran casa elegida
por Rafael para vivir en Madrid: “¡El Museo del Prado! ¡Dios Mío!”. La
mirada descubre una realidad que se intensifica contemplada a través de
las ventanas abiertas que son los cuadros de “los viejos pintores”. Los
siguientes versos dan cuenta del mismo asombro referido por Alberti
después en La arboleda perdida:

¡Oh asombro! ¡Quién pensara que los viejos pintores
pintaron la Pintura con tan claros colores;
que de la vida hicieron una ventana abierta,
no una petrificada naturaleza muerta,
y que Venus fue nácar y jazmín trasparente,
no umbría, como yo creyera ingenuamente!

Cerrando el poema se hace explícito el cambio vocacional hacia la
poesía en un recorrido cuyo origen está en la pintura y a cuyo reconocimiento
se deben el poeta y el libro:

Alberti en los rincones del Museo del Prado;
la sorprendente, agónica, desvelada alegría
de buscar la Pintura y hallar la Poesía,
con la pena enterrada de enterrar el dolor
de nacer un poeta y morir un pintor,
hoy distantes me llevan, y en verso remordido,

269

UT PICTURA POESIS: A LA PINTURA, DE RAFAEL ALBERTI

© UN
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The Text of Alberti's <i>De Pictura</i>

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The Text of Alberti's De Pictura

C. Grayson

To cite this article: C. Grayson (1968) The Text of Alberti's De Pictura , Italian Studies, 23:1,
71-93, DOI: 10.1179/its.1968.23.1.71

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THE TEXT OF ALBERTI'S DE PICTURA*
Students of Alberti, myself among them, have been stressing for some
time now the need for a closer examination of the text of his treatise
on painting. A recent appeal, uttered, however, with some scepticism,
is contained in an article by the late P.-H. Michel, who confined him-
self to a rather superficial comparison of the three known MSS of the
Italian redaction, concluding:

(a) that these MSS represent a tradition of the author's version
that is quite independent of the sixteenth-century translations
made by Domenichi and Bartoli, which were made directly from
the Latin text published in the Basle edition of 1540;

(b) that comparison between the Italian version of the three MSS
and the Latin text of the Basle edition would argue not so much
a straight translation of his work by the author, as the virtually
free and independent composition of two nonetheless closely
related redactions, of which the Latin was almost certainly the
first.!

Although Michel's article represents some advance on earlier studies,
at least in directing closer attention to the var~ants in the Italian
MSS (where, however, in spite of Michel's diffidence it is possible to
go further), it completely ignores the long neglected problem of the
Latin version. Indeed, for Michel as for the majority of scholars,
tIe texte latin' of Alberti is the Basle edition which has, faute de mieux,
been regarded as a firm and authoritative point of reference in textual
comparison.2 On the contrary, however-and the present article
aims among other things to prove it-investigation shows:

(I) that the Basle edition presents a text which is different in many
particulars from all the known MSS of Alberti's Latin redaction

* This article is dedicated to Richard Krautheimer on the occasion of his
retirement from his Professorship of the History of Art in New York University.

1P.-H. Michel, Le traite De la Peinture de Leon-Baptiste Alberti; version latine
et version vulgaire, in Revue des etudes italiennes, 1962, pp. 80-g1. The author does
not appear to have known two articles relevant to his argument: C. Grayson,
Studi su L. B. Alberti, in Rinascimento, IV, 1953, pp. 54-62 (II. Appunti suI
testo della Pittura); R. Watkins, Note on the Parisian MS of L. B. Alberti's
vernacular Della Pittura, in Rinascimento, VI, 1955, pp. 369-372.

2 De Pictura praestantissima et nunquam satis laudata arte libri tres absolutissimi
. . ., Basileae, 1540. This text was reprinted in Amsterdam, 1649, together with
Vitruvius De Architectura. For use of the Basle edition by scholars and for
some preliminary comments on the Latin text, see my article in Italian Studies,
XIX, 1964, pp. 14 fl. (and especially p. 15, notes 4 and 5).

71

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c. GRAYSON

with one exception which is highly suspect, having been
extensively corrected, possibly by collation with that edition;

(2) that within the extant MS tradition of the Latin De pictura
there are elements which might in part illuminate the state of
the Italian redaction and help towards some solution of the
vexed question of the composition of and the relationship
between the two versions.

Furthermore, there appear to be serious errors in Michel's evaluation
of the Italian MSS, which cannot be allowed to go unchallenged and
uncorrected. It is necessary, therefore, to begin again da capo, and
to repeat or at least summarize some of the observations already made
elsewhere. Let us start with the Italian version and its three MSS.
These are:

(i) Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, MS II.IV.38, ff. 120r.-136v.;
at the end of the text is the date: 17 July 1436. This Alberti
miscellany has been sufficiently described elsewhere to need no
further detailed examination here.s (FI)

(ii) Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, MS fonds italien 1692, ff. 1-31;
:first indicated by Michel who attributed it to the late :fifteenth
century; it is in fact most probably of the sixteenth century, and
contains only De Pictura in Italian, with the following super-
scription:

f. Ir.: Incomenca uno tractato partito in tre parte facto per 10
eruditissimo homo miser batista degli alberti facto in latino e
lui medesimo reducto in vulgare perche se ne potesse havere piu
comodita per Ii non letterate che fosseno de larte 0 a quelli
tirate per affectione 0 amore che habiano a larte.4 (P)

8 Cf. L. B. A., Operevolgari, I, Bari, 1960, pp. 367-68.
"Michel first indicated the MS in his book La pensee de L.B.A., Paris, 1930,

p. 22; he also considers it in his art. cit. in n. 1 above, and there publishes the
superscription, without knowing the discussion of its text and superscription by
Renee Watkins (cit. in n. I). Mrs. Watkins states (p. 371) that the Paris MS
'contains one passage, besides the prefatory note (i.e. the superscription), not
previously known. This seems to be a fragment of textual explanation for a
geometrical illustration left out of the MS' ; and she prints the somewhat incompre-
hensible six lines of this text, confessing that she could not reconstruct the illus-
tration from it. The same passage is to be found in the Verona MS, and in a
more intelligible version and with a drawing, at the end of the text in the Florence
MS (Fl). As this is of some interest, I give the text and drawing in an Appendix.
In her footnote to the same page 371, Mrs. Watkins states that 'the number 27
is inscribed below in the hand, I believe, of the copyist,' that is below the passage
in the Paris MS referred to above; and she finds difficulty in relating this to any
page in the text. I do not think this is in fact a number, but an abbreviation for
'etcetera,' which looks somewhat like 2c7.

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THE TEXT OF ALBERTI'S DE PICTURA 73

(iii) Biblioteca Capitolare, Verona, MS 273, ft. 144I.-169v., which
Michel believed to be tune copie de l'ecole de Felice Feliciano
. . . un exemplaire plus recent que celui de 1436 mais ne
pouvant guere etre descendu au-dessous de 1450.' As this
miscellany, written throughout in the same hand, contains a
Leonardi Pisaurensis Pkysici speculum lapidum dedicated to
Caesar Borgia (ft. 1-83), Michel is at least a half century out in
his dating. Furthermore, it is not a handsome copy, and there
would seem no evidence to connect it with Felice Feliciano.5
(V)

Of these three MSS there is no doubt, from even the most cursory
comparison, that FI is the best text.6 The other two (P and V)
offer versions that are not only very corrupt but also linguistically
different from that of the Florentine MS. The relationships between
the three are complicated, indicating that the MS tradition must have
been far richer than these few survivors would suggest. P and V
are obviously closely related through a common archetype. This is
clear not only from common variants which distinguish them from
FI, but particularly from a common though not entirely identical error
of transcription.7 In P and V at the same point in Bk. II (after in
qual cosa, p. 82, 1. 21) the text jumps forward suddenly some fourteen
pages to si leva dal pavimento (p. 96, 1. 29) and then continues to the
end of that book (p. 102).8 These 'missing pages' of the text then
appear transcribed almost complete in P and incomplete in V, as
follows: after cke queUe ad una in the first few lines of Bk. III (p. 103,

1. 7), P goes on with li altri col capo armato ritratto (p. 93, 1. 6) and
continues through to il calcagno medesimo del pie (p. 96, 1. 29), then
again leaps backwards to cosi persequendo affermo cke debbano (p. 82,
1. 21) and on 'as far as per questo dalli pittori non era (p. 93, 1. 6). Von
the other hand, takes up at the same point (i.e. from p. 93, 6 after

5 Michel, art. cit., p. 86. His description and dating are perplexing, and the
doubt arises in one's mind, as he does not give the number of the MS, whether
we were looking at the same thing! Yet my own enquiries in Verona some years
ago revealed for De pictura only this miscellany, 273, among the MSS of the
Capitolare. Furthermore, the passages quoted from 'his' Verona MS by Michel
correspond to the readings of MS 273. It also contains Alberti's Elementa
Picturae in Latin and Italian (fl. 131-43).

6 It was most recently used for the edition of the Pittura by L. Malle, Florence,
1950; but Fl is not without errors or omissions, some of which were pointed out
in my art. of 1953 (cit. sup. n. I) when reviewing Malle's edition; others will
appear from the present article.

7 This error of transcription in P has already been pointed out by R. Watkins,
art. cit., pp. 370-71.

8 Page references in this section are to the most recent and available edition of
Della Pittura, by L. Malle, Florence, 1950.

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74 c. GRAYSON

p. 103, 7) and goes as far as consunto ogni suo arte (p. 95, 1. 2), then
jumps back to estrema e quasi infin-ita (p. 87, 1. I) and continues up to
mancamento dell'occhio (p. 93, 1. 4). After this both P and V resume
from certa distanza (p. 103, 1. 8) and continue to the end of Bk. III.

All this means that, in spite of the chaotic transcription, the text in
P is virtually complete (in comparison, that is, with FI), whereas
several pages are missing entirely from V.9 As in neither of the two
MSS do any of these jumps in the text occur at the end or beginning
of a leaf but always in the middle of a page, it is clear that they both
descend ultimately from a common source in which the same
disturbance of the text existed presumably through incorrect assembly
of the pages. There is no trace of such an error or possibility of error
in Fl. One error of omission common to P and FI at one of the points
of disturbance of the text is almost certainly coincidental and easily
explicable as homeoteleuton.lo It might suggest, however, a closer
link, which is largely borne out by other variants, between P and FI
than between V and Fl. Although P and V share the similar
disturbance of the text described above, differences clearly indicate that
neither can have descended from the other. Their relationship is
further complicated by the fact that V to a far greater extent than P

9 The lines missing from P correspond to Malle's ed. p. 94, ll. 12-16 (et sempre .••
dalla natura). Besides many short passages, V lacks: pp. 82, 1. 21 to 87, 1. I;
95, 1. 2 to 96, 1. 29; whilst for the whole of pp. 99, 1. 25 to 102, 1. 28 (end of Bk. II)
V simply has the following:

Et notino che contro a lumi da l'altra parte corrisponda l'ombra, a poco a poco
giongiendo al chiaro il biancho e da l'altra parte l'ombra, e a cio a cognoscere
ti sia guida el spechio. Posi mente che alIa superficie piana, in ogni suo luogo,
sta il colore forte; nelle sperice mutasi; e qui chiaro e qui scuro e qui mezzo.
Piacime che il biancho e il nero s'adoprano cum grande discretione
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Alberti's De Pictura: Its Literary Structure and Purpose
Author(s): D. R. Edward Wright
Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 47 (1984), pp. 52-71
Published by: Warburg Institute
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ALBERTI'S DE PICTURA:
ITS LITERARY STRUCTURE AND PURPOSE

D. R. Edward Wright

T HE De pictura has been the focus of numerous studies, but it remains unclear exactly
what sort of work Alberti composed in I435 and what its intended purpose was, for
scholars have over the years perceived it differently. It has been called a scientific

treatise, an essay, a beginner's handbook, and even a Ciceronian oration. Those
interested in its mathematical content most commonly refer to it as 'the first modern
treatise on the theory of painting',' or 'a fully fledged treatise on vanishing point
perspective'.2 On the other hand, in writings which deal with the more literary aspects of
De pictura it is sometimes termed an 'essay': 'Alberti was not in the least concerned with
the formulation of a science of vision.

....
The main thesis of the essay is the creation of a

communicatory theory of the arts, heavily based on the humanistic concept of the
istoria... [as] a means of moral edification'.3

The employment of such designations as 'treatise', 'theory', or 'science' in connection
with De pictura implies that the work possesses a systematic, analytic mode of literary
organization which, in fact, it demonstrably does not have. Alberti never refers to his book
as a tractatus, ars, or ratio. Nevertheless, it would be equally inappropriate to attribute to De
pictura the casual informality of the essay - not yet a distinct literary type in Alberti's day
in any case - despite a certain repetitiousness, for the book is carefully constructed after a
specific ancient model, that model being neither an oratio, nor an isagoga.4 The word by
which Alberti refers to De pictura is commentarii, which in classical Latin could, in certain
cases, signify 'schoolboy's text or notebook' and was so understood in this sense by
Federico Zuccari: '[Alberti's] commentaries on painting.., concerning the teaching and

This article anticipates a larger study of Alberti's De
pictura and related writings on painting produced during
the Renaissance. I thank Professor Edward Muir of
Syracuse for his kind help and useful suggestions. The
following abbreviations will be used throughout:

Alberti-Grayson (L. B. Alberti, On Painting and On
Sculpture, Cecil Grayson ed., London 1972);

Alberti-Spencer (L. B. Alberti, On Painting, John R.
Spencer tr., New Haven and London 1966);

Quintilian, Inst. (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, H. E.
Butler tr., Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge Mass.
and London 1961-66).

Section numbers for the text of De pictura are those of
the Grayson edition.

1 Alberti-Spencer, p. II.
2John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space,

Boston 1967, p. 254.
3 M. Barry Katz, Leon Battista Alberti and the Humanist

Theory of the Arts, Washington D.C. 1978, pp. 40-41.
4 Creighton Gilbert, 'Antique Frameworks for

Renaissance Art Theory: Alberti and Pino', Marsyas,
1943-44, pp. 87-1o6, suggested that Alberti's book was

a classical isagoga, or introductory text. In his 'Ut rhetor-
ica pictura: A Study in Quattrocento Theory of Painting',
this Journal, xx, 1957, 26-27 and 30-32, John Spencer
employed the terms 'treatise' and 'essay' interchange-
ably, but also compared the structure of De pictura to
that of a five part Ciceronian oration. Michael Baxan-
dall has stated that '[Alberti] was writing a treatise, a
tractatus, and it was the business of a tractatus to offer

precepts ...'; see his 'Alberti and Cristoforo Landino:
The Practical Criticism of Painting', Rome. Accademia
Nazionale dei Lincei, Quaderno n. 209. Convegno internazionale
indetto nel V centenario di Leon Battista Alberti, Rome 1974,
pp. 143-44. Creighton Gilbert, Italian Art 14o00-1500:
Sources and Documents, Englewood Cliffs N.J. 1981, p. 51,
has said that 'The essay On Painting by Leon Battista
Alberti is often printed as a separate book .... Because
he was breaking new ground and seeking language for it,
Alberti is often moved to state a point several times. By
omitting some of these, it has been possible to present
the entire matter of the book'.

The classical isagoga known to Renaissance scholars
was merely a simplified version, with some commen-
tary, of a larger original text, and it conformed to the

52
journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Volume 47, 1984

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ALBERTI'S DE PICTURA 53

training of young painters'. More importantly, a detailed analysis of the literary structure
ofDe pictura confirms that it was intended as a pedagogic manual for beginners and might,
therefore, be most suitably called a 'primer of pictorial representation'.5

Alberti's De pictura is not a 'science' or 'theory' of painting (ars pingendi), although it
does draw upon some theoretical materials. A textbook meant for instruction in the

general principles of a subject demands a lucid, straightforward approach to the
arrangement of the material. Clarity facilitates presentation by the teacher, who can
commence with broad concepts and proceed in logical sequence through each division of
the topic. A methodically ordered exposition also aids the student who must memorize the
contents, and it will simplify the search for particular points of interest, especially in the
absence of an index or table of contents. Ancient writers on Rhetoric described a precise
method of exposition for such texts. In the De oratore Cicero noted that in the past books on
received knowledge in the higher disciplines had lacked formal order, but that 'a certain
art was called in from the outside, derived from another definite sphere, which philo-
sophers arrogate wholly to themselves, in order that it might give coherence to things so
far disconnected and sundered, and bind them in some sort of scheme'.6 This 'certain art'
was, it turns out, Dialectic and the 'scheme' that of definition by analytical subdivision as
discussed by Plato in the Phaedrus, and by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics:
The author of a handbook on a subject that is a generic whole should divide the genus into its first
infimae species.., and then endeavour to seize their definitions by the method we have described...
After that, having established what the category is to which the subaltern genus belongs ... he
should examine the properties 'peculiar' to the species, working through the proximate common
differentiae.
In somewhat less technical language Aristotle made a similar point at the beginning of the
Physics, the work most frequently cited by later authors in this connection:

When the objects of an inquiry, in any department, have principles, conditions, or elements, it is
through acquaintance with these that knowledge, that is to say scientific knowledge, is attained.
For we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or
first principles, and we have carried our analysis as far as its simplest elements ... Now what is
plain and obvious at first is rather confused masses, the elements and principles of which become
known to us later by analysis. Thus we must advance from generalities to particulars; for it is a
whole that is best known to sense-perception, and a generality is a kind of whole, comprehending
many things within it, like parts.7

systematic, analytic expository mode of the tractatus or
the ars. See, for example, Porphyry's Isagoge; Iamb-
lichus's introduction to the Arithmetic of Nichomachus;
Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos ('we shall now conduct our discus-
sion after the manner of an eisagogikon', F. E. Robbins tr.,
Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge Mass. 1971, p.33);
and Varro's (lost) Eisagogikos: De officio Senatus habendi
(summary in Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, xiv, vii).

The hypothesis that De pictura is an oratio is belied by
Alberti's division of his text into three 'books'.

The alternative appellation 'essay' is an anachron-
ism, for the word was not coined until the time of
Montaigne (1580). Sir Francis Bacon ( Works, ii, London
1837, P. 44) distinguishes the treatise from the essay in
terms of length, detail and organization: 'To write just
treatises, requireth leisure in the writer, and leisure in
the reader ... which is the cause that hath made me
choose to write certain brief notes, set down rather

significantly [i.e. suggestively] than curiously [i.e. with
careful art], which I have called "Essays"... that is,
dispersed meditations'.

s For Alberti's use of the word commentarii see
Alberti-Grayson, pp. 36, 58, 94 and 104. On its meaning
see especially Quintilian, Inst., I, v. 7; and alsoI, viii, 19;
II, xi, 7; 11, viii, 58 and 67; x, vii, 30 and 32. Federico
Zuccari is quoted in Romano Alberti, Origine e progresso
dell'Accademia del disegno, Pavia 1604, pp. 24-25 (English
translation in Franco Borsi, Leon Battista Alberti, N.Y.,
Hagerstown, San Francisco, London 1977, p. 371).

6 Cicero, De oratore, I, xlii, i188; see also I, xlii, 188-89
and I, xxiii, io9 (E.W. Sutton tr., Loeb Classical
Library, I, London

I96,
pp. 131 and 77).

7 Plato, Phaedrus, 277 c. Aristotle, Analytica posteriora,
96b and Physica, 184a (translation in The Basic Works,
R. McKeon ed., N.Y. 1966, pp. 176 and 218).

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54 D. R. EDWARD WRIGHT

As Cicero explained - and as exemplified by such texts as the Rhetorica ad Herennium8 -

this analytic paradigm when applied in practice required the following method of

presentation:
a. A preliminary definition of the art, describing its goals and scope;
b. A systematic outline of the major divisions and subdivisions of the art, with brief discussions of

each one;
c. The body of the exposition, complete down to the small details, presented in conformity with

the outline.

Such an expository method does not occur in Italian Renaissance writing about Painting
until the later sixteenth century. In his Trattato dell'arte della pittura Giampaolo Lomazzo,
quoting the opening passage of Aristotle's Physics, explains that there are two basic modes
of organizing the contents of any science or art. One, called the ordine della natura, begins
from the imperfect and terminates with the perfect, progressing from particular facts
toward general concepts. The alternative ordine della dottrina operates in the reverse sense:

quest' ordine procede dalle cose universali alle particolari. It was the latter which Lomazzo had
chosen:

[I] meane first to beginne with the definition of Painting which is the first, most generall, and
immediate principle, as most properly offering it selfe to our consideration: wherein afterwards I
purpose to shew the true genus thereof, which is the first part of the definition, and consequentlie al
the differences concurring to the same, for the restraining of the genus which is a species of quality
called Arte and maketh the most speciall kinde of Qualitie called painting. And because the
differences which make painting a particular and distinct Arte from all others are five: viz.
Proportion, Motion, Colour, Light and Perspective: I will orderly handle each of them in a several book.
... and so in these five bookes I wil observe the ordine de la dottrina, which beginneth with the most
universall and immediate principles of Painting, namely the Definition: and afterwardes, I will
come to the five partes which limit out the arte ofpainting... [I] have added a sixth booke, wherein
I will handle that Practically, which in the five former bookes is taught Theorically, because the order
of Teaching requireth, that the Practise should follow the speculation9

By contrast Alberti did not organize the De pictura contents secundum ordinem disciplinae,
but rather secundum ordinem naturae. Book I introduces the young boy to very simple, easily
memorized axioms and elements which will prepare him for the study of painting proper.
Book II presents the adolescent workshop trainee with a survey of the branches of painting
he must master before undertaking a professional career. Book IIi advises the adult

practitioner what steps he may take to become an ideal or perfect painter. The pedagogic
model chosen by Alberti was purposely geared to the several stages of human mental

development. It began with basic elements, the ABCs, and built toward more and more

complex notions and concepts by a process of synthesizing. Alberti says that

I would have those who begin to learn the art of painting do what I see practised by teachers of
writing. They first teach all the signs of the alphabet separately, and then how to put syllables
together, and then whole words. Our students should follow this method with painting. First they
should learn [by heart] the outlines of surfaces, then the way in which surfaces arejoined together,
and after that the forms of all the members individually; and they should commit to memory all the
differences that can exist in those members ... he will persist in such enquiry with both eye and

mind.10

8 Rhetorica ad Herennium, II, 2-3.
9 G. P. Lomazzo, Trattato dell' arte della pittura, Hil-

desheim 1968, pp. 13-I6 (tr. by R. Haydock, in E. G.

Holt, A Documentary History of Art, II, Garden City N.Y.
1958, pp. 75-76).

o10 Alberti-Grayson, p. 97; cf. p. 96, n. 6o.

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ALBERTI'S DE PICTURA 55
This inductive and cumulative approach to instruction was based on Aristotle's theory of
mental development, from mere sense perception in the infant to the appearance of

memory in childhood, the stage at which one began to be teachable; and finally to the
threshold of intellectual maturity with the emergence of rational judgment enabling one
to arrive at sound conclusions based on accumulated experience." Consequently, with
the idea that 'small children are better adapted for taking in small things', Quintilian,
who, as several scholars have noted, was Alberti's source for the above, started his

programme of instruction with simple easily learned objects of perception, the letters of
the alphabet carved on ivory blocks. The child would then learn to combine letters into
Latin words, and next to compile phrases and sentences according to the rules of

grammar. Once he began to be capable of thinking for himself, the student was introduced
to the question of deducing unknown grammatical forms from those previously learned.
In combination with rudimentary exercises in reading aloud and composition, this was to
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THE NATURE OF H/STORIA IN

LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI'S DE f/CTURA

In this artiele I inquire into Alberti' s elaim that bis treatise, De Pictura (1435), offers
a totally new treatment of painting. I argue that the rationale behind Alberti' s self­
promoting elaim derives from bis perception of historia, and from his conceptualization
of the relationsbip between this pictorial geme and nature. The historia is not a depic­
tion ofthe natural, the contingent and the temporal: The nature that Alberti uses for his
historia is an ideaI nature that cannot, in fact, be observed in nature. Alberti' s historia
deconstructs natural reality in an attempt to reconstruct the unobservable, tìxed princi­
ples wbich lie bebind the surface ofthe visible world. I would also argue, however, that
Alberti' s historia is neither a mere representation of ideaI truths. Rather, it is the means
to construct a fixed and ideaI social reality. Alberti's historia is not meant to convey a
meaning, but rather to create a reality~ it is not a representation of an action, but the
execution and performance of one. Alberti promotes the use of an artificial system of
signs, linear perspective, in order to promote controlled social interactions that in their
turo will create an idealsocial artifact: a decorous community.

But it is of littie concem to us to discover the first painters or the inven­
tors of this art, since we are not writing a history of painting 1ike Pliny,
but treating of the art in an entirely new way. l

I n the present paper I wish to inquire into what exaetly Alberti meant,
when he defined his treatment of painting as new; I wish to inquire into

what is behind this self-promoting claim of originality. In pursuing this
question, I tap into a rieh seholarly diseourse on Alberti's De pictura, a
diseourse whieh underseores Alberti's novelty in promoting the employ­
ment of rhetorieal prineiples by painters, as welI as the novelty of his ana­
lytie exposition of geometrie perspeetive. However, I will attempt to offer
a different prism through whieh we may examine Alberti's claim of origi­
nality.

Alberti does not write a history of painting and in faet, his treatise does
not realIy treat the art of painting as a whole. If we read his treatise eare­
fulIy, it beeomes quite clear that Alberti diseusses one,. and only one, spe­
eifie genre when he lays down his prineiples for painting, that of historia.
It is not merely one more genre that a painter ean exeeute while using Alber­
ti's preseriptions in De Pictura. Rather, the prineiples Alberti presents in his
treatise for the eorreet exeeution of painting and the fitting eharaeter and
edueation of the painter alI derive from, and are designed for, this genre
alone. Historia, aeeording to Alberti, is not merely important: it is "the grr:at
work of the painter."2 It is the highest form of painting a painter should

'W

8

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H/STORIA IN LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI'S DE P/CTURA 9

aspire to: "The great work of the painter is not a colossus but a 'historia',
for there is far more merit in a 'historia' than in a colossus."3

I claim that the nove1ty which Alberti exhibits in De pictura is his
choice of this specific subject matter. Moreover, the "entire1y new way"
which Alberti claims to offer in his treatise is the way in which he conceives
of historia: In De pictura, historia is no Ionger a depiction of the contingent
and the temporaI, nor is it a mere representation of ideaI truths. Rather, it is
the means to construct a fixed and ideaI sociai reality.4

What exact1y is a pictoriai historia? What is the merit of historia? Why
wouId Alberti consider it important enough to write a treatise that anaIyl.~s
the correct way of executing this genre? Nowhere in his treatise does Alber­
ti expIain what he means by this term. However, as I intend to demonstrate,
Alberti does describe the function of a historia and its intended effect on the
behoIders. 5

The term appears as one element of the art of rhetoric: in Cicero' s De
Inventione, historia is that part of narratio (the exposition of events that
have occurred or are supposed to have occurred) that gives an account of
actuai occurrences remote from the present. It serves to e1ucidate arguments
put forth in the dispositio. 6 In addition to its use in rhetoricai discourse,
historia was aiso used in medicaI discourse: it was the descriptive narrative
of the progress of a disease; it was the description of the physical phenom­
ena that the physician observed; it was the writing down of patients' case
histories. But whether historia was used in a rhetorical discourse, as the
narration of past events, or whether it was used in a medicaI discourse, as
the narration of the symptoms of a specific patient, it was nonetheless about
the contingent and the specifico It could not serve as the basis of a disci­
pline; it could not serve as the basis of a scientia, in the Aristotelian sense
of the term.7

If historia, then, is about contingent events and phenomena, why is
Alberti explicit1y reIuctant to talk about the concrete origins of painting, and
why does he refuse to narrate the historical progress of this pictorial gepre
from its inventors to his own time? After all, as Waswo demonstrates con­
ceming Alberti' s attitude towards language, Alberti held an organic percep­
tion of history and culture, a perception in which the ancients were not
necessarily superi or to contemporaries.8 And indeed, in De Pictura Alberti
goes so far as to claim that there are no good ancient examples of a pictorial
historia.9 Hence, why is Alberti not interested in delineating the historical
progress of this pictoriai genre, a de1ineation that could emphasize the pic­
tori al achievements of his own time? His reluctance to do so might have
derived from the absence of surviving ancient paintings. But, more than

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lO YAEL NADAV-MANES

that, I believe that it is Alberti' s awareness of the historicity of this pictonal
genre which Ieads him to perceive ancient examples as irrelevant.

Alberti, for his purpose in De Pictura, cannot prescribe imitation of
classical modeIs for this pictorial genre. Since historia is about the specific
and the contingent, ancient examples would, perhaps, convey knowledge
about the past, but they cannot serve the purpose that Alberti has in mind
for the modem historia. As I intend to demonstrate by the end ofthis paper,
Alberti's historia is composed of its beholders just as much as it is com­
posed of surfaces and colors.1o It is this awareness of the soci al component
of the historia and hence, of its specificity and historicity, which Ieads
Alberti to disregard past examples of this genre.

Greenstein claims that Alberti's perception of historia derived from the
late medieval tradition in which a pictorial work of art that depicted a narra­
tive scene represented both a faithful account of actual events and the high­
er meaning to which these events referred. Hence, in De Pictura Alberti
wishes to demonstrate that painting can represent convincingly the visible
world, that painting can convey moral truths, and that the intellectual con­
tent of painting is allegorical. Historia, for Alberti, represented not merely
the visible and contingent world, but also conveyed the higher, ideaI mean­
ings of the depicted subject matter. 11 As will become apparent in the foI­
Iowing pages, I argue that Alberti's historia, indeed, concems more than a
depiction of the contingent. In fact, it is precisely this occupation with tile
ideaI that necessitates the use of Iinear/mathematical perspective: the histo­
ria does not represent the visible; it employs to its service a mathematicaI,
invisible reality. Moreover, Alberti's historia is not meant to convey a
meaning, but rather to create a reality; it is not a representation, but an
action.

What are Alberti's criteria for a perfect historia? According to Alberti,
an admirable historia will give pleasure to all spectators, Ieamed and un­
Ieamed alike. 12 He goes on to explain what elements will make the historia
so pleasurable as to captivate an audience regardless of educational back­
ground: "The first thing that gives pleasure in a 'historia' is a plentiful
variety. [ ... ], so with everything the mind takes pleasure in variety and
abundance."13 Copia and varietas, two rhetorical principles, should be used
by the painter of the Historia. 14 However, it is interesting to note that Alber­
ti immediately qualifies this rhetorical principle:

[ ... ]; and I would praise any great variety, provided it is appropriate to
what is going on in the picture. [ ... ] But I would have this abundance
not only furnished with variety, but restrained and full of dignity and
modesty. I disapprove of those painters who [ ... ] follow no system of

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HISTORIA IN LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI'S DE PICTURA

composition, but scatter everything about in random confusion with the
result that their 'historia' does not appear to be doing anything [non rem
age re] but merely to be in turmoil. 15

II

The historia is meant to be doing something, it has a purpose. Alberti,
as the above passage demonstrates, instructs the good painter of a historia
to consider what is going on in the painting: to consider the occasiono Not
unlike the rhetorical principle of decorum, Alberti calls for the internai
coherence and functionality ofthe historia. 16 He instructs the painter to use
restraint in his manipulation of copia and varietas, so that the historia will
be full of dignity and modesty. He calls for a decorous moderation: the
ability of an orator-painter to embellish his text in accordance with tl}e
desired effect and function of that text, in accordance with the audience, and
with the status of the speaker, the orator-painter. 17 It is about utility, about
achieving the final goal of the speech.

We have seen how Alberti calls for restraint and moderation and how
he calls for decorum in regard to the specific occasion which is taking pIace,
i.e., to what is going on in the historia. We stilI need to consider the nature
of this occasion and the function of Alberti' s visual text. But before we do
so, let us examine one more instance where the importance Alberti places
on rhetorical principles in the construction of a historia is, perhaps, the most
apparent:

Perhaps the artist who seeks dignity [dignitas] above ,aH in his 'historia,'
ought to represent very few figures; for as paucity of words impart maj­
esty to a prince,provided that his thoughts [sensa] and orders are under­
stood, so the presence of only the strictly necessary numbers of bodies
confers dignity on a picture. [ ... ] I think Varro'
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Renaissance Studies Vol. 4 No. 3

The structural problematic of
Leon Battista Alberti’s De pictura

MARK JARZOMBEK

INTRODUCTION

Though Leon Battista Alberti’s treatise on painting was the first text of
its kind in the Renaissance, its organization was based on an old and
time-worn concept which Alberti adapted from medieval philosophy, and
refurbished for his purpose. De pictura is new wine in an old bottle. But,
whereas the wine has been studied over and over again, the bottle has
received little scholarly attention.

A proper understanding of De pictura hinges on the tripartite struc-
tural division of the treatise. As Alberti explains in the famous letter of
dedication to Filippo Brunelleschi (1435):

You will see that there are three books. The first, which is entirely
mathematical, shows how this noble and beautiful art arises from roots
within Nature herself. The second puts the art into the hands of the
artists, distinguishes its parts and explains them all. The third instructs
the artist how he may and should attain complete mastery and under-
standing of the art of painting. ’
Those few scholars who have attempted to explain the origin of these

divisions have pointed to classical sources. John Spencer, for example, in
his article ‘Ut rhetorica pictura’ (1957), suggests that the structure of De
pictura derives from Cicero.* Though Alberti drew heavily on Cicero,
Cicero’s five distinctions - exordium, narratio, confirmatio, reprehensio,
peroratio - can be applied only with much uncertainty to the three books
of De pictura. Even Spencer has to admit that ‘Alberti does not follow this
organization precisely. ’3

Heinrich Muhlmann, in his recently published dissertation A esthe-
tische Theorie der Renaissance: L. B . Alberti (1981), argues for a con-
nection to Aristotle and Horace:

’ I will not discuss the important symmetry between the organization of the treatise and Alberti’s
tripartite definition of painting into circumscription, composition and ‘the reception of light’. All
translations from De pictura come from Cecil Grayson, Leon Baptista Alberti: On Paznting and On
Sculpture, The Latin Texts of ‘De Pictura’ and ‘De Statua’ (New York, 1972).

John Spencer, ‘Ut rhetorica pictura’,j Warburg C, 20 (1957), 26-44.
’ Ibid. 3 1 .

0 1990 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Oxford University Press

274 Mark Jarzombek

In Anlehnung an den Aufbau der Poetiken des Aristoteles und des
Horaz wird die Malerei nacheinander unter den drei Gesichtspunkten
‘rudimenta’, ‘pictura’, ‘pictor’, abgehandelt. Das erste Buch gilt den
elementaren Bestandteilen der Malerei; hier wird die Zentralperspec-
tive dargestellt. Das zweite Buch behandelt die Malerei nach ihren in-
haltlichen Gegenstanden, das dritte schliesslich handelt vom Maler.

There are many aspects of Alberti’s philosophy that are Aristotelian,
but as far as Aristotle’s Poetics goes, there is little to connect it to De pictura
on this particular issue. Muhlman’s second suggestion that the organiza-
tion of the treatise derives from Horace’s De arte poetica is also problem-
atical. The argument was first proposed by Creighton E. Gilbert in the
article ‘Antique frameworks for Renaissance art theory: Alberti and Pino’
( 1 943) where he draws a connection between Horace and the terms
rudimenta, pictura and pactor that appear as chapter headings in some
manuscripts of De pictura (Biblioteca Vaticana, Cod. Reg. Lat. 1549,
lr-33’, for example).

The form in question is the isagogic treatise, which classical scholars
have studied with reference particularly to Horace’s Art of Poetry. The
most recent contributors to the discussion hold that Horace’s epistle is
systematically divided into three sections: On poetic content, On
poetic technique, On the poet. The correspondence of these with
Alberti’s Rudiments (technique), Painting (content), and Painter
(poet) is indisputable.6

Gilbert forces the matter, for De arte poetica may move in a very general
way from poetic subject matter, to poetic form, to the nature of the poet
himself, but it has no internal divisions, and its rambling and discursive
style is so different from De pictura that one could be satisfied with it as
Source only if other alternatives were lacking. ’ Furthermore, those
manuscripts of De pictura which contain the headings rudimenta,

‘ Heiner Miihlmann, L. B . Alberti: Aesthetische Theorie der Renaissance (Bohn, 1982). 3.
’ On the Poetics in the early Renaissance see: V . Branca, Poliziano e l’umanesimo della parola

(Turin, 1983), 13-16, 32.
Superficially, i t might appear as if Alberti’s sentence in the dedication - ‘The first book which is

entirely mathematical shows how this noble art arises from roots within nature herself’ - harkens
back to Aristotle’s directive in the opening of Poetics: ‘Let us begin in the right and natural way, with
basic principles’ (Aristotle, Poetics, translated with an introduction and notes by Gerald F. Else, Ann
Arbor, Mich., 1970, 15). The description of Book One in the dedication is too cryptic, however, to
allow this conclusion. In the second sentence of Book One, Alberti explains more precisely that he
will first ‘take from mathematicians those things that seem relevant’ and only ‘when we have learned
these will we go on . . . to explain the art of painting from the principles of nature’ (Grayson. On
Puznfing, 37). In other words, Alberti’s discussion of mathematics in Book One does not follow
‘nature’, but precedes i t , an important distinction, as will be shown. The explicit ‘non-natural’
beginning of De pictura is clearly antithetical to the fundamental tenets of Aristotle’s treatise.

‘ Creighton E. Gilbert, ‘Antique frameworks for Renaissance art theory: Alberti and Pino’,
Marryas, 3 (1943-5), 91.

’ Leon Golden, ‘Horace’, in Classical and Medieual Literary Criticism (New York, 1974), 155.

The structural problematic of Alberti’s De pictura 275

picturu and pictor are late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century copies of the
treatise, with the titles superimposed on the three books.* Older copies,
significantly, have no headings at all. Even if Alberti had organized the
treatise according to these divisions, he would have been drawing not on
classical sources, but upon medieval ones, such as De uniuerso by
Hrabanus Maurus (d. 856), a text well known to Alberti and used in the
composition of De re aed+’catoria. Hrabanus’s distinctions between
poesis, @emu and poetae must be seen within the context of a medieval
topos that will be discussed below.

ALBERTI’S TEMPLE METAPHOR

An important clue to understanding the significance of the tripartite divi-
sion of De pictura can be found in one of Alberti’s oft-neglected literary
works. In Book Three of Profugiorum ab aerumna (Refuge from Mental
Anguish), written during the 1440s, Alberti digresses from a discussion on
human suffering to describe a Greek temple as a metaphor for ‘the temple
of Pallas and Pronea’ that writers construct in their work.” The im-
mediate function of this metaphor is to elucidate the discourse of Agnolo
di Pandolfini, the principal interlocutor of the piece. Yet it is clear that
Alberti refers to more than simply the organization of a particular text;
the metaphor stands for the organization of learned discourse in toto.”
Just as the temple took seven hundred years to build, ‘men of genius in-
vented the arts and sciences over the centuries and constructed in their
writings, as it were, a temple and residence for Athena’.’’

Of the temple’s three major components, the walls represent rational
discourse and correspond to ‘mankind’s investigations into truth and
falsehood’; the columns, a metaphor for ‘man’s need and ability to in-
vestigate nature’, represent scientific discourse; the roof, which protects
the temple as a whole, corresponds to ‘the avoidance of vice and the
desire for virtue’. It stands for the realm of ethics. The temple, Alberti ex-
plains, once civilization’s greatest accomplishment, now lies in ruins.

Alberti casts a shroud of ambiguity over the origin of the metaphor
suggesting that it was based on something he might have read in Vitru-
vius, but no matter how diligently one searches through Vitruvius’s Ten
Books on Architecture, one finds no such building described there, least

Rosario Assunto, Die Theorie des Schoenen im Mittelalter (Cologne, 1963). 182. On the in-
fluence of Hrabanus’s text on Alberti see: John Onians, Bearers of Meaning, the Classical Orders in
Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance (Princeton, NJ, 1988), 147-9.

’ Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanist Theory of Painting (New York, 1967). 7.
l o Grayson, Opere volgari, 11, 160-1.
‘ I The manuscript does not mention the location of the temple, as Grayson points out. He suggests

that it might be the temple of Ephesus, even though i t was not dedicated to Athena, but to Artemis
(p. 437).

’’ Grayson, Opere volgari, 11, 161. All translations of Profugiorum ab aerumna are mine.

276 Mark Jarzombek

of all in Alberti’s symbolical sense. l 3 Humanists frequently invented
quotations; in Intercoenles, Alberti even admits engaging in the prac-
tice. l 4 The description of the temple of Athena was, however, not a total
fantasy, but may have been inspired by Pliny’s description of the Temple
of Ephesus (NaturalHzstory [36, 95-7), Pliny having been one of Alberti’s
favourite sources. Pliny’s description is more technical in nature than
Alberti’s; he gives the dimensions, discusses the foundations and, for good
measure, throws in some colourful stories concerning the temple’s con-
struction. Alberti’s metaphor only marginally addresses such specifics.

Important is not so much the temple as the metaphoral image. The im-
petus to see architecture as metaphor was of course commonplace. Car-
dinal Juan de Torquemada, for example, a fifteenth-century Dominican
theologian (possibly known to Alberti?), defined the Church as a temple
where the walls are faith composed of squared and solid stones cemented
by charity; the length of the church is magnanimity, its breadth charity,
its height hope and its columns the doctors of the Church.’5 Alberti’s
temple metaphor, however, does not elucidate points of dogma; instead it
refers to the structure of an all-encompassing cultural discourse which re-
quires that many ‘men of
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