However, according to James Beck,[3] "to single out one of Leon Battista's 'fields' over others as somehow functionally independent and self-sufficient is of no help at all to any effort to characterize Alberti's extensive explorations in the fine arts".

His father, Lorenzo di Benedetto Alberti, was a wealthy Florentine who had been exiled from his own city, but allowed to return in 1428.

[6][7] He lived for a time in Florence, then in 1431 travelled to Rome, where he took holy orders and entered the service of the papal court.

[8] During this time he studied the ancient ruins, which excited his interest in architecture and strongly influenced the form of the buildings that he designed.

[9] He distinguished himself as a writer while still a child at school, and by the age of twenty had written a play that was successfully passed off as a genuine piece of Classical literature.

[7] In 1435 he began his first major written work, Della pittura, which was inspired by the burgeoning pictorial art in Florence in the early fifteenth century.

This was followed in 1450 by a commission from Sigismondo Malatesta to transform the Gothic church of San Francesco in Rimini into a memorial chapel, the Tempio Malatestiano.

[8] In Florence, he designed the upper parts of the façade for the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, famously bridging the nave and lower aisles with two ornately inlaid scrolls, solving a visual problem and setting a precedent to be followed by architects of churches for four hundred years.

[10] In 1452, he completed De re aedificatoria, a treatise on architecture, using as its basis the work of Vitruvius and influenced by the ancient roman buildings.

He was a welcomed guest at the Este court in Ferrara, and spent time with the soldier-prince Federico III da Montefeltro in Urbino.

[9] Among Alberti's minor but pioneering studies, were an essay on cryptography, De componendis cifris, and the first Italian grammar.

He also wrote a small Latin work on geography, Descriptio urbis Romae (The Panorama of the City of Rome).

[9] Vasari describes Alberti as "an admirable citizen, a man of culture... a friend of talented men, open and courteous with everyone.

"[12] Della pittura (also known in Latin as De Pictura) relied on the study classical optics to approach the perspective in artistic and architectural representations.

Painters and sculptors strive "through by different skills, at the same goal, namely that as nearly as possible the work they have undertaken shall appear to the observer to be similar to the real objects of nature".

Alberti's thoughts on harmony were not new—they could be traced back to Pythagoras—but he set them in a fresh context, which fit in well with the contemporary aesthetic discourse.

Pope Nicholas V, to whom Alberti dedicated the whole work, dreamed of rebuilding the city of Rome, but he managed to realize only a fragment of his visionary plans.

Alberti wrote I Libri della famiglia—which discussed education, marriage, household management, and money—in the Tuscan dialect.

[17] In Rome he was employed by Pope Nicholas V for the restoration of the Roman aqueduct of Acqua Vergine, which debouched into a simple basin designed by Alberti, which was later replaced by the Baroque Trevi Fountain.

It was a challenging task, as the lower level already had three doorways and six Gothic niches containing tombs and employing the polychrome marble typical of Florentine churches, such as San Miniato al Monte and the Baptistery of Florence.

He employed two large scrolls, which were to become a standard feature of church façades in the later Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical Revival buildings.

The piazza is a trapezoid shape defined by four buildings, with a focus on Pienza Cathedral and passages on either side opening onto a landscape view.

The back of the palace, to the south, is defined by loggia on all three floors that overlook an enclosed Italian Renaissance garden with Giardino all'italiana era modifications, and spectacular views into the distant landscape of the Val d'Orcia and Pope Pius's beloved Mount Amiata beyond.

[10] Giorgio Vasari, who argued that historical progress in art reached its peak in Michelangelo, emphasized Alberti's scholarly achievements, not his artistic talents: "He spent his time finding out about the world and studying the proportions of antiquities; but above all, following his natural genius, he concentrated on writing rather than on applied work.

"[9] Alberti is said to appear in Mantegna's great frescoes in the Camera degli Sposi, as the older man dressed in dark red clothes, who whispers in the ear of Ludovico Gonzaga, the ruler of Mantua.

"[21] Alberti made a variety of contributions to several fields: [1] Archived 2022-04-18 at the Wayback Machine Magda Saura, "Building codes in the architectural treatise De re aedificatoria," [2] Archived 2022-04-18 at the Wayback Machine Third International Congress on Construction History, Cottbus, May 2009.