Few figures of the Italian Renaissance were as wide-ranging as Leon Battista Alberti — artist, architect, poet and philosopher — and in On Painting (1435) he produced a work that would reshape the history of art. Taking the order and beauty he perceived in the natural world as his starting point, Alberti laid out the principles of distance, dimension and proportion with a precision that gave painters an entirely new theoretical foundation. His treatise guides the artist through the rules of composition, representation, light and colour, showing how these elements combine to produce work that is graceful and pleasing to the eye, and sets out the moral as well as the artistic qualities he considered essential to the successful painter. The influence of On Painting was immediate and profound, felt by contemporaries including Ghiberti, Fra Angelico and Veneziano, and extending to later masters such as Leonardo da Vinci. It remains a compelling and enduring theory of art.
ISBN 13: 9780140433319
Author: Leon Alberti
