A classic scholarly edition of two important treatises, on painting and sculpture, by the great Florentine architect, Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), this edition adding a 20-page biography. The text of the treatises was translated from the Latin by Cosimo Bartoli (1503-1572) and the life of Alberti written by Girolamo Tiraboschi (1731-1794). It includes two letters written by the translator, one to the painter and architect Giorgio Vasari and the other to the architect and sculptor Bartolomeo Ammannati, as well as a three-page preface by the publisher, Guisti, Ferrario & Co. The treatise on painting (pp. 1-99), divided in 3 parts, is a theoretical classic and of essential importance for the history of perspective.
Alberti was born in Genoa but spent most of his career in Florence. He wrote and circulated De Pictura in Latin in 1435, dedicated to Brunelleschi. It was the first modern treatise on painting, presenting the artist not following the Medieval notion of the craftsman carrying out a trade but the new Renaissance notion of the creative spirit making a work of beauty, more akin to literature or philosophy. He emphasises that art should imitate nature and presents mathematical perspective as the tool for doing so. This pioneering work was first published at Basel in 1540, The shorter treatise on sculpture, also originally written in Latin (De statua) and sometimes dated ca. 1434, demonstrates Alberti's early interest in classical antiquities.
Binding slightly rubbed and title page slightly foxed. Very good copy. Kemp, Science of Art, pp. 21-24.