Chapter One

Alberti, Vitruvius, and Leonardo

first we observed that the building is a form of body (Leon Battista Alberti)

In most architectural accounts, Renaissance humanism refers to the period in Italy that commences in the early fifteenth century and coincides with a new interest in classical theory. The ethos of humanism was not one-dimensional, for it infused all of the arts and humanities, including philosophy, rhetoric, poetry, art, architecture, law, and grammar. Generally, it entailed a new appreciation of classical Greek writers (now being diffused by the printing press), whose ideas had to be squared with late-antique and medieval sources as well as with the teachings of Christianity. In this respect, Leon Battista Alberti epitomized the humanist brain.

In the case of architecture, humanism often had a slightly different connotation. It has not only entailed the belief that the human being, by virtue of his divine creation, occupies a privileged place within the cosmos but also the fact that the human body holds a special fascination for architects. I am referring to the double analogy that views architecture as a metaphor for the human body, and the human body as a metaphor for architectural design. In this sense too Alberti was a humanist, for when his architectural treatise of the early-1450s appeared in print in 1486 (alongside the "ten books" of the classical Roman architect Vitruvius) he promulgated a way of thinking about architecture that would largely hold fast until the eighteenth century. In this way Alberti became perhaps the f