On this day in 1404, Leone Battista Alberti was born. Alberti has several claims to fame, being something of the all-round Renaissance chap. He was an author and architect, poet and priest, linguist, philosopher, cryptographer and humanist - the quintessential Renaissance polymath.
He studied Classics, trained in Law and wrote several important works. In all his writing he expounded his philosophy that the ultimate goal of art was to imitate nature, and he saw mathematics as the foundation blocks of art, and of science. His most well-known work (in art circles at least) is De Pictura, or Della Pittura (1435). He dedicated the work to Filippo Brunelleschi, a self-taught architect who had previously formulated a set of principles for linear perspective. Alberti picked up Brunelleschi's work and further developed the theory to produce a coherent mathematical structure of perspective relevant to the viewer.
Della Pittura is still considered a seminal work, and is essential reading for all art historians.
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