The Renaissance Theory of Artistic Imitation and Genius

Leon Battista Alberti's De Pictura, composed in Latin in 1435 and issued in an Italian vernacular version, Della Pittura, in 1436 with a dedication to the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, is the first Renaissance treatise to argue systematically that painting deserves recognition as a liberal art grounded in mathematics rather than dismissed as manual craft. Alberti codifies linear perspective through his costruzione legittima, a geometric procedure for constructing a consistent illusion of receding space on a flat surface organized around a single vanishing point, building on the practical innovations Brunelleschi had demonstrated in Florence in the 1410s. Beyond technique, Alberti holds up istoria, an ambitious multi-figure narrative composition capable of moving the viewer through the depicted figures' varied gestures and emotions, as the painter's highest and most demanding achievement.