Momus is the most ambitious literary creation of Leon Battista Alberti, the humanist-scientist-artist and "universal man" of the Italian Renaissance. In this dark comedy, written around 1450, Alberti charts the fortunes of his anti-hero Momus, god of criticism. This edition offers a new Latin text and the first full translation into English.

This chapter presents the text of a lecture on the role of Leon Battista Alberti on the redirection of Renaissance humanism given at the British Academy's 2009 Italian Lecture. This text explains that Alberti, as successor of Renaissance humanism founder Petrarch, sought to redirect the movement. It compares Petrarch's and Alberti's notions of humanism and traces Alberti's inflection of the movement in directions that would never have been thought of by his predecessor.

The author publishes the initial fragment of an unknown treatise by Leon Battista Alberti on the casting of statues written around 1455 and preserved in cod. Ottob. lat. 1870. The fragment contains a discussion on the nature of light and the element of fire.

This article sheds new light on the Theogenius and the Profugiorum ab erumna libri III, two Italian dialogues in which Leon Battista Alberti was influenced by Seneca’s On the Tranquillity of the Mind and Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortunae, but developed an innovative reflection on the care of the self as medicine of the mind. The novelty hinged not on his pessimistic diagnosis of the human condition, which linked the disquiet caused by the inconstancy of fortune with (...) the natural instability of the mind, but rather on his ironic conception of therapy, which challenged the Stoic belief in the possibility of finding a definitive cure for hardship. To what extent and in what sense Alberti’s therapy exhibits an ironic stance is clarified by the analysis of two Intercenales, the Latin work which aimed to relieve the mind’s maladies through laughter. While Erumna made the case that the way of life championed by the Stoics as well as the choice of living the life of another man cannot alleviate human misery, Patientia mocked the efficacy of Stoic remedies such as patience and time. People can only hope to come to terms with the mind’s maladies and should bear their burdens cheerfully rather than despair of them: this is one of the most intriguing aspects of Alberti’s medicine of the mind. (shrink)

This paper aims at presenting the work of Dutch architecture Hans van der Laan through a comparison with the Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti by stating the similarity of the role assigned to proportion in architectural design by both architects. In particular, the study will show how both Van der Laan and Alberti understood proportion and the perceptive and aesthetic values of proportioned forms as the result of an intellectual appreciation.

Lejos de la interpretación de Leon Battista Alberti como prototipo del "hombre universal", GARIN ha reconocido el carácter contradictorio del pensamiento albertiano. En efecto, en la extensa y polifacética obra del humanista genovés coexisten dos visiones antagónicas del hombre y el mundo. A una le corresponde la confianza en la razón, a la otra la constatación del carácter absurdo de la existencia. Este Alberti "sombrío" se expresa en las páginas de Momus y las Intercenales. En ellas, (...) la apelación a una existencia simulada es abordada a través de una risa desacralizadora del ideal humano que alumbró el temprano Renacimiento italiano. Far from the interpretation of Leon Battista Alberti as a prototype of the "universal man", GARIN has analyzed the contradictory nature of Alberti's thought. In fact, in the extensive and versatile work of the Genoese humanist two opposite visions of man and the world coexist: one believes in the power of reason, the other acknowledges the absurdity of life. It is in Momus and the Intercenales that this "somber Alberti" is present. In these texts the appeal to a simulated life is addressed through a form of laughter that demystifies the human ideal of the early Italian Renaissance. (shrink)

Abstract:In his Descriptio urbis Romae, Leon Battista Alberti provides step-by-step instructions for how to draw the outlines of Rome. The image transmitted through Alberti’s text is so accurate that it is justly described as the first “map” of Rome after the Forma Urbis (3rd c. CE). Alberti's idea was sparked by the renewed reading of the works of Claudius Ptolemy: the Geography, but also—as I argue for the first time—the Almagest. I show how this image (...) blends the ways that terrestrial and celestial territories are commonly depicted and gives a fresh interpretation of this cosmologically overdetermined city. (shrink)

In 1436, Leon Battista Alberti wrote a letter to Filippo Brunelleschi, which he attached to a manuscript of his recently completed treatise on painting, De pictura. In it, Alberti lauded some of the Florentine artists of his day, singling out Brunelleschi for particular praise on account of the unprecedented engineering feat of constructing the cupola of the Florentine cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. This article undertakes a close reading of some parts of the letter, focusing (...) especially on the link that Alberti draws between great intellects and giants. Exploring the cultural traditions that might have informed Alberti’s thinking—in particular, canto XXXI of Dante’s Inferno —the article considers how the giants introduce an element of moral jeopardy, significantly complicating what might otherwise appear to be a purely celebratory text. This sense of ambivalence is further explored in relation to the ‘long exile’ from which Alberti says that his family had recently returned. Similar phrases appear in Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and consideration of these poems, it is argued, might further inflect our understanding of Alberti’s words in the letter. In this way, the article investigates how Alberti employed sophisticated literary means in order to express his own feelings regarding Brunelleschian ingegno and technical mastery; feelings that were both highly nuanced and, ultimately, unsettled. (shrink)

El presente artículo expone brevemente las circunstancias del "redescubrimiento" de la obra de Luciano en la Italia renacentista y el movimiento renovador en las letras que esto trajo consigo en el caso específico del Momus de Leon Battista Alberti. Para tal objetivo, me concentraré en el rol de Manuel Crisoloras; en los aspectos de género literario que Luciano plantea, sobre todo, en el Prometheus es in verbis, y finalmente, en cómo estos son retomados en el Momus, donde (...) Alberti se presenta como innovador de las letras latinas, pero al mismo tiempo como indirecto continuador del quehacer luciánico. (shrink)

The sense of wonder and admiration experienced by individuals who witness a striking sight, whether natural or man-made, has long been regarded as playing a role in the acquisition of knowledge. Both Aristotle and plato regarded wonder and admiration (θαύμα), sparked by something seen, as the origin of philosophical thinking. In the Middle Ages, theological writers considered the way in which admiration and, specifically, the state of rapture it engendered, helped the Christian experience devotion to God. What happened when a (...) beholder was filled with admiration upon encountering a magnificent building was addressed in discussions of magnificent patronage from at least the thirteenth century. The present Note investigates how Alberti’s reflections on magnificence and admiration informed his theory of aesthetic design in De re aedificatoria, completed in the 1450s. It proposes that Alberti redefined what makes a building admirable or ‘magnificent’ and also understood ‘beholding in admiration’ to be an active mode of looking. Therefore, his views on magnificent architecture were subtly different from those of Pope Nicolas V, in particular. By considering Alberti’s theory of aesthetic design as a reflection on magnificence and admiration, additional light is also shed on his confidence in the protective power of beauty and his design recommendations for the temple. (shrink)