Leon Battista Alberti

(1404 - 1472)

Born into a Florentine banking family, Leon Battista Alberti was educated in mathematics by his father. His friends Donatello, the sculptor, and Filippo Brunelleschi, the architect, influenced this work, which systematized the painter’s perspective and marked the beginning of Renaissance art theory. “Nothing pleases me so much,” Alberti wrote, “as mathematical investigations and demonstrations.” He reached old age “in tranquility and contentment,” according to Giorgio Vasari, and died in 1472.