A View on Nature: Leon Bat­tista Alberti’s Legacy

Introduction

This essay aims to illus­trate the rel­e­vance of Leon Bat­tista Alberti’s human­ism to con­tem­po­rary eco­log­i­cal chal­lenges, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regards to the rela­tion­ship between humans, nature, and the arts, includ­ing archi­tec­ture. In order to under­stand that rel­e­vance, Alberti’s work should be read as a holis­tic project lead by one all-com­pass­ing aim. The mul­ti­plic­i­ty of top­ics cov­ered and the dif­fer­ent lit­er­ary styles give rise nei­ther to obsta­cles to read­ing the works as a whole nor the sus­pi­cion of incon­sis­ten­cy. On the con­trary, this vari­ety is evi­dence of the breadth of his insight. 

On the one hand, Alber­ti shows the pow­er of the line, as the found­ing ele­ment for prospec­tive con­struc­tions, along with oth­er mea­sure­ment tools, invent­ed to describe real­i­ty, but most­ly to design new inhab­it­ed spaces. His con­fi­dence in Nature, as a per­fect mod­el know­able through phys­i­cal obser­va­tion, is what opens up his new direc­tion. For this rea­son, his works can be con­sid­ered one of the first to draw a con­nec­tion between the prac­ti­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal spheres and a sci­en­tif­ic con­cept of Art. Three trea­tis­es, De Pic­tura, Descrip­tio Urbis Romae, and De Stat­ua will be the main ref­er­ences to sup­port this argument. 

On the oth­er hand, in texts such as Vita S. Poti­ti, Del­la Famil­ia, and Theoge­nius he inves­ti­gates the inner atti­tude of liv­ing beings, made up of virtues but also faults, explor­ing its mul­ti­ple con­nec­tions on social struc­tures, from the fam­i­ly through to the polit­i­cal, and their envi­ron­ment. He does not focus on prac­ti­cal trans­for­ma­tions, but on human beings’ pur­pose that indi­rect­ly under­lies and affects them. Both orig­i­nate from the two inter­pre­ta­tions of Nature. How­ev­er, Alber­ti is able to find a con­ver­gence between these two appar­ent­ly irrec­on­cil­able approach­es. He strong­ly con­tributes to Arts and Architecture’s progress, with­out under­es­ti­mat­ing the destruc­tive capac­i­ty of the human actions on Nature. 

Nature as Machina Orbis

As men­tioned above, before com­plet­ing De Re Aed­i­fi­ca­to­ria, Leon Bat­tista Alber­ti had already explored how oth­er art forms, such as paint­ing and sculp­ture, could be reformed for a more sec­u­lar and sci­en­tif­ic cul­ture. De Pic­tura, Descrip­tio Urbis Romae, and De Stat­ua, rep­re­sent the first field of inves­ti­ga­tion. Here, he com­bines the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal con­tri­bu­tions, defin­ing new artis­tic prin­ci­ples based on a spe­cif­ic idea of Nature, seen as vis­i­ble and invis­i­ble struc­ture, know­able through direct expe­ri­ence. This will be the basis for the future sci­en­tif­ic method. 

This dif­fer­ent approach evi­dences, read­ing his claim, the impor­tance of oth­er dis­ci­plines in cre­at­ing a stronger the­o­ret­i­cal impact. He looks at both clas­si­cal Greek and Latin authors and their lega­cy in math­e­mat­ics and geom­e­try, but also in poet­ry and rhetoric. How­ev­er, more than any oth­er dis­ci­pline, Alber­ti con­sid­ers geom­e­try to be the foun­da­tion for paint­ing, ded­i­cat­ing to it entire­ly De Pictura’s first chap­ter: ​“I want the painter, as far as he is able, to be learned in all the lib­er­al arts, but I wish him above all to have a good knowl­edge of geom­e­try” (L.B. Aber­ti, De Pic­tura, para­graph 53).

Lat­er, in De Stat­ua, geom­e­try will be fun­da­men­tal to under­stand­ing any nat­ur­al body or envi­ron­men­tal pro­por­tions, to be copied with the use of tri­lat­er­a­tion and coor­di­nates. In fact, geom­e­try, unlike the math­e­mat­i­cal fields that deal with inner struc­tures, is con­cerned with the phys­i­cal appear­ance of the world as well.

As a result, in both trea­tis­es this dis­ci­pline finds a prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion through new tools that open up knowl­edge of the envi­ron­ment as a tan­gi­ble expe­ri­ence, that will affect new cre­ative tra­jec­to­ries. The first trea­tise cov­ers the inven­tion of per­spec­tive. The visu­al rays, inter­sect­ing a sur­face, are the foun­da­tion of this new way of look­ing at the world. Those lines medi­ate the rela­tion­ship between the human eye and the exter­nal world, describ­ing it accu­rate­ly. As a con­se­quence, this descrip­tive process is used lat­er to project pic­tures and buildings.

Whilst per­spec­tive still belongs to the abstract realm of draw­ing, in De Stat­ua, Alber­ti invents new tools: nor­mae, an object made by exempt­ed and squares, used to record dimen­sions along the Carte­sian coor­di­nates, lengths, thick­ness and widths, and to describe ​“more sta­ble and fix by Nature” (L.B. Alber­ti, De stat­ua, para­graph 8); and the fini­tio, used to record curves and body vari­a­tions like movements. 

In spite of their dif­fer­ences, these tools allow the achieve­ment of impor­tant new artis­tic prin­ci­ples: cir­cum­scrip­tion, com­po­si­tion, his­to­ria and recep­tion of light. With­in Descrip­tio Urbis Romae, he shows oth­er sim­i­lar tools, used on this occa­sion to describe a city: Rome. Through a numer­ic sys­tem of coor­di­nates, a sort of para­met­ri­cal pre­cur­sor as sug­gest­ed by Mario Car­po, he draws a series of con­nect­ing points and lines on the ground on which to cre­ate an accu­rate map: walls, gates, rivers, and mon­u­ments, all parts of an urban struc­ture rather than sequences or sin­gle build­ings. Alber­ti explains pre­cise­ly how this process works: 

This accu­rate process leads to the def­i­n­i­tion of some prin­ci­ples that are sim­i­lar to those for paint­ing and sculp­ture, lin­ea­men­ta, col­lo­ca­tio, and situs, cru­cial to plan­ning and design­ing new parts of the city in the man­ner employed by Princes and Popes in Rome at the time, where­by they would extend lines to define inter­sec­tions on the ground. 

Lines, sur­faces, and num­bers, record­ed by tools and defined by prin­ci­ples, would cap­ture the Beau­ty ​“dis­trib­uted by Nature” (L.B. Alber­ti, De stat­ua, para­graph 12), pro­vid­ing it to human­i­ty as a new cul­tur­al horizon.

How­ev­er, the cru­cial thread in Alberti’s thought that encom­pass­es all these process­es and con­cepts is the idea of Nature as a per­fect mod­el to copy, and from which should come any prin­ci­ples and dis­ci­plines. Every­thing can be learned from Nature, con­ceiv­ing it as a unique source, a per­fect organ­ism of shapes, move­ments, char­ac­ters, and col­ors, and of the real Beau­ty. For this rea­son, over any oth­er tools or prin­ci­ples, human eyes are the main medi­um through which to appre­hend the exter­nal world. Togeth­er with the eyes, Alber­ti also men­tions the role of the mind, which should select excel­lent exam­ples ​“from the most beau­ti­ful bod­ies, and every effort should be to per­ceive, under­stand and express beau­ty” (L.B. Alber­ti, De Pic­tura, para­graph 55).

For the first time, Beau­ty is not an abstract idea, but a result of the selec­tion of many beau­ti­ful exam­ples. The art­work is the result of human inven­tion and can be more per­fect than Nature itself, even if it is a copy, open­ing up the debate on the trans­for­ma­tion of Nature into arti­fi­cial, and autonomous objects.

Although this idea of Nature is strong­ly reit­er­at­ed in each of those three trea­tis­es, it is in De Pic­tura that Alber­ti begins a brief inves­ti­ga­tion of anoth­er mean­ing of Nature, as essence. This rep­re­sents the imma­te­r­i­al side of liv­ing beings, the nat­ur­al atti­tude, that, how­ev­er always find an expres­sion through the body, actions, pur­pos­es, etc.

Alber­ti explores this sec­ond inter­pre­ta­tion in oth­er works such as Apologhi, Del­la Famiglia, Theoge­nius, and Momus, but in this treaty, he relates it to the artis­tic world. De Re Aed­i­fi­ca­to­ria is the only trea­tise that ful­ly con­verges both aspects, there­by pro­vid­ing a spe­cif­ic role for the archi­tect and the artist.

In chap­ter two, para­graph 41, Alber­ti explains how the painter should define a ​“his­to­ria”, a nar­ra­tive of the paint­ing, cov­er­ing its gen­er­al com­po­si­tion, its char­ac­ters’ move­ments, and their bod­i­ly expressions: 

Claim­ing this, Alber­ti high­lights the sub­tle thread that joins inter­nal and exter­nal Nature, between human feel­ings and their bod­ies, com­mu­ni­ty, and environment. 

A few para­graphs lat­er, in chap­ter three, Alber­ti adds that the painter’s aim as being to ​“obtain praise, favor and good-will for his work much more than rich­es. The painter will achieve this if his paint­ing holds and charms the eyes and minds of spec­ta­tors“. Lat­er still, Alber­ti con­cludes that a good painter should be a good man, intro­duc­ing a spe­cif­ic con­nec­tion between his virtue, and his artis­tic work. 

He is aware of the strong rela­tion­ship between the artist, his out­comes, and his moral val­ues. and at the end his spec­ta­tors, that as a result, open up the civic issue of the role of art, which will become the cru­cial aim of archi­tec­ture in cre­at­ing a har­mo­nious society. 

Nature as Immanent Realm

A famil­iar­i­ty with some of Alberti’s pre­vi­ous dia­logues, such as Apologhi, Del­la Famiglia, Theoge­nius, and Momus is essen­tial to ful­ly under­stand his idea of inner Nature (essence). These works are part of his eth­i­cal and social research, an attempt to give relief to the human soul and to probe human exis­ten­tial strug­gles1.

Each work is rep­re­sent­ed by one or more cen­tral char­ac­ters: Saint Poti­tus in Vita S. Poti­ti, Batista and Gian­noz­zo in Del­la Famiglia, Theoge­nius, Geni­pa­tro and Microtiro in Theoge­nius, Gelas­tus, and Eno­pus in Monus. Despite their dif­fer­ences, they are char­ac­ter­ized by a sim­i­lar style of nar­ra­tion2 that unveils the con­nec­tion between the char­ac­ters and their cor­re­spond­ing envi­ron­ments: wild nature for Saint Poti­tus; the city and the coun­try­side for Batista, Theoge­nius, Geni­pa­tro, and Microtiro; and the under­ground world for Gelas­tus. These places are not just set­tings for each dia­logue, but sophis­ti­cat­ed and metaphor­i­cal mir­rors to human behav­ior, their qual­i­ties, and their state of mind. In this sense, a ​“pre-eco­log­i­cal” think­ing emerges here to describe a com­plex research tra­jec­to­ry that will find an answer in his the­o­ry of Architecture.

In Theoge­nius espe­cial­ly, Alber­ti employs a bucol­ic dia­logue where this nar­ra­tive form is used to assert that human beings, their nature, and their land­scape can be con­ceived as a sin­gle enti­ty, where exter­nal and inter­nal realms are inex­tri­ca­bly con­nect­ed as a net­work, although they are vis­i­bly sep­a­rat­ed. Theoge­nius and Microtiro, the two main char­ac­ters of this work, reflect on the idea of for­tune and the valu­able virtues of human beings whilst they are in the shade of the trees. This idyl­lic set­ting helps the read­er to pic­ture and con­se­quent­ly to under­stand their human qual­i­ties and the val­ue of the philo­soph­i­cal top­ics they are exploring. 

This har­mo­nious intel­lec­tu­al atmos­phere is dis­turbed by the entrance of Tichipedo, the own­er of all the sur­round­ing land, who brings with him the shad­ow of the urban land­scape. As in many of the oth­er dia­logues, such as Del­la Famiglia, the bucol­ic land­scape is seen as a mod­el of Beau­ty and placed in con­trast with the urban land­scape, described as a place of ugli­ness marred by exces­sive and osten­ta­tious wealth. On the one hand, pris­tine nature is the mir­ror of human­is­tic virtues and the real source of human for­tune. On the oth­er hand, the city is an image of the arro­gance and malfea­sance of human beings and the ori­gin of their unsta­ble and frag­ile fortunes. 

In addi­tion to offer­ing a dis­tinct con­cept of inner human nature and its effects on soci­ety, Alber­ti shows how it phys­i­cal­ly trans­forms the envi­ron­ment, open­ing up a fur­ther con­cern in how human beings con­ceive the trans­for­ma­tive process, cre­ative or not.

In the sec­ond part of Theoge­nius, Nature is described as hav­ing two aspects: its bucol­ic and mag­nif­i­cent ele­ments and, in con­trast, its dan­ger­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions. Alber­ti does not hide this lat­ter aspect; he ref­er­ences many exam­ples of urban cat­a­stro­phes caused by floods, earth­quakes, and vol­ca­noes, rec­og­niz­ing the dan­ger in many poi­so­nous plants and sav­age ani­mals. How­ev­er, Alber­ti round­ly con­demns human beings, call­ing them ​“omin­uc­cuoli​”3 who, through their arro­gance and rest­less­ness, are the real cause of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. He is aware that the dan­ger­ous aspect of Nature is incom­pa­ra­ble to the dam­age caused by humans. 

It is a fact that Alberti’s judg­ment on human beings is cyn­i­cal and clear-sight­ed: human beings too often demon­strate lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion for their envi­ron­ment, includ­ing oth­er sim­i­lar liv­ing beings and ani­mals. This means that, unlike in Barbaro’s approach, human actions could cause soci­etal dis­rup­tion and envi­ron­men­tal dam­age if not guid­ed by virtue and cor­rect eth­i­cal behav­ior. This con­scious­ness may have led Alber­ti to con­ceive of Nature as more than just a human resource, thus dis­tanc­ing him­self from Cicero’s4 vision of human beings as explained in his De Natu­ra Deo­rum5.

For the Latin writer, the human being is cen­tral to the whole of real­i­ty and has a more impor­tant role than oth­er liv­ing things. Cicero’s use of par­tic­u­lar terms demon­strates this belief: phras­es such as ​“domi­tu nos­tro” and the ​“homine dom­i­na­tus” clear­ly show how he frames nature from the human per­spec­tive. He gives legit­i­ma­cy to the impo­si­tion of human will on plants by grow­ing them and on ani­mals by hunt­ing or using them, guid­ed only by human desires and only to their ben­e­fit. The human’s pow­er is nev­er denied and he is described as hav­ing a ​“domain”, which express­es an idea of absolute pos­ses­sion over nat­ur­al resources. From Cicero’s point of view, the per­fect and divine nature of the world is the basis of his claim to a spe­cif­ic hier­ar­chy of liv­ing things. This per­fec­tion is not char­ac­ter­ized by the idea of beau­ty; rather, its har­mo­ny is the result of divine wis­dom and intel­lec­tu­al pow­er. In con­se­quence, humans receive a priv­i­leged place in com­par­i­son to oth­ers, giv­ing them the full right to sub­ju­gate the world. 

In con­trast, Alberti’s vision of Nature can be aligned to some con­tem­po­rary eco­log­i­cal think­ing, where Nature is not a sep­a­rate cat­e­go­ry from human beings but embraces all liv­ing beings equal­ly. For this rea­son, the effects of the inter­ac­tion between Nature and humans must be tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion in all human activities. 

Nature and Architecture as the Good Medicine 

These argu­ments clear­ly sup­port Euge­nio Garin’s claim: Alber­ti con­sid­ers Nature not just as a ​“Machi­na Orbis”, gov­erned by num­bers and a per­fect and beau­ti­ful realm, but also in terms of its imma­nent side. This means con­sid­er­ing the con­nec­tion between inner and out­er worlds, human and oth­er liv­ing things, behav­iors and envi­ron­ment, civic com­mu­ni­ty, and urban struc­ture, made up as a con­stel­la­tion of lines, main­ly shaped by how human beings per­ceive cul­tur­al­ly Nature, and the world outside. 

The first inter­pre­ta­tion of Nature con­tributes to build­ing a new human cre­ative hori­zon, rule-based and ground­ed in sci­en­tif­ic and prac­ti­cal process. The sec­ond aims to frame the cul­tur­al issue that could lead human­i­ty to a more peace­ful and har­mo­nious civic life. To achieve that, he care­ful­ly analy­ses many clas­si­cal authors, such as Pliny, Ovid, Cicero, and Quin­til­iano, as well as her­met­ic phi­los­o­phy6. These con­tri­bu­tions are cru­cial when they sug­gest an ide­al of Nature, as a bound­less vital force, name­ly con­sist­ing of the inner abil­i­ty to heal itself, like med­i­cine. For instance, the ​“noble lie” 7 that involves the myth of Kho­ra and its social use as Phar­makos, as argued by Pla­to in Timaeus and The Repub­lic, could be the inspi­ra­tion for Alberti’s aim to res­ur­rect the Greek idea of the Polis, in which the urban struc­ture and com­mu­ni­ty are a unique body, due to the fun­da­men­tal con­nec­tion between cit­i­zens and their land. How­ev­er, as fur­ther demon­strat­ed below, Alber­ti does not embrace this con­nec­tion, which meant the clo­sure of the bor­ders in the Polis. In the Sev­enth book of De Re Aed­i­fi­ca­to­ria he claims: ​“Yet I don’t think that we ought to fol­low these who exclude strangers of every kind.” (L.B. Alber­ti, De Re Aed­i­fi­ca­to­ria, Book 7, 191). This capac­i­ty to con­ceive of a unit­ed com­mu­ni­ty does not pre­clude per­me­able bor­ders and an idea of a ter­ri­to­ry for the many. On the con­trary, this heal­ing qual­i­ty implies a con­sis­tent con­stituent aim that could be very fruit­ful. Chang­ing the cul­tur­al approach on which human behav­ior is based could pos­i­tive­ly affect the social and phys­i­cal environment. 

In this sense, Archi­tec­ture, through its civic role, could become the best dis­ci­pline to address this change, as long as it is based on the prin­ci­ples iden­ti­fied above. 

Momus can be con­sid­ered a sort of bridge between these dia­logues and the art treaties and the writ­ing of De Re Aed­i­fi­ca­to­ria, which could be seen as rep­re­sent­ing the cul­mi­na­tion of his explorations. 

In Momus, Alber­ti writes of a minor Greek god and his vicis­si­tudes whilst in exile in the human world, and his trav­els between the heav­ens and earth fol­low­ing divine for­give­ness. Although the sto­ry deals with a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sub­ject to those described above, it can also be seen as a nar­ra­tive device used by Alber­ti to high­light his dis­ap­point­ment with the cur­rent polit­i­cal pow­ers in Rome, and show­ing the virtues and vices of human beings. Unlike his pre­vi­ous eth­i­cal works, the nar­ra­tive is full of insights on archi­tec­ture. It is a fact that dur­ing the same peri­od, Alber­ti was writ­ing De Re Aed­i­fi­ca­to­ria, demon­strat­ing the rea­son for these connections. 

Focus­ing on some spe­cif­ic para­graphs makes Alberti’s idea of Nature and its rela­tion­ship with the art world even clear­er. Some con­firm his claims from pre­vi­ous works, whilst oth­ers car­ry the idea yet further.

For instance, the first sug­ges­tion comes from the scene that takes place in the heav­ens. Here, all the oth­er Gods are involved in a con­test cre­at­ed by Jupiter’s request to add grace to the human world, giv­ing it ele­gance and worth. Some gods invent­ed dif­fer­ent species of ani­mal, Prometheus cre­at­ed human beings, Juno a house, etc. As a result, the human world receives these divine gifts but the beau­ty and plea­sure they cre­ate imme­di­ate­ly inspire envy in the same gods. 

Encour­aged by the oth­ers, Momus decides to pro­vide his gift: insects and oth­er dis­gust­ing ani­mals. Here, Alber­ti con­firms the Nature includes neg­a­tive aspects as well, as already shown in Theoge­nius, but more than that he empha­sizes again the virtues and vices of human beings.

How­ev­er, what is very inter­est­ing is that the entire work is an inves­ti­ga­tion of human trans­for­ma­tive actions: from Jupiter’s desire to dis­rupt the world that he him­self designed, to the dif­fer­ent places that Momus vis­its, the city and its pub­lic build­ings, but also the pris­tine land­scape, and even Charon’s realm, the Under­world. These places are crowd­ed with all kinds of human beings, in all their vari­ety and with dif­fer­ent social behav­iors. The mis­for­tunes and for­tunes of human beings are well described by Momus, who spends his exile on Earth dis­cov­er­ing their dif­fer­ent aspects. He goes to the city direct­ly from the sky and here he tries many jobs to bet­ter under­stand how humans live. He encoun­ters all kinds of char­ac­ters, giv­ing a descrip­tion of a wide range of pos­si­ble human behav­iors. As in Theoge­nius, the city is the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of human cor­rup­tion, vio­lence, and chaos, except for few places: the tem­ple, that rep­re­sents a civic and valu­able place, where the god Virtue finds a refuge; and the coun­try­side, where two philoso­phers, Socrates and Dem­ocri­tus, live exclud­ed from the soci­ety. Again, the land­scape is a mir­ror of soci­ety and, as in the Bucol­ic tra­di­tion, the coun­try­side is a place of vir­tu­ous men reject­ed by a cor­rupt society. 

In anoth­er scene, this dialec­tic oppo­si­tion between pris­tine Nature and the city, between Nature and human trans­for­ma­tions, reach­es a cru­cial point. Fol­low­ing Gelas­to and Charon’s jour­ney from the Under­world to Earth, the read­er is encour­aged to reflect on the idea of Beau­ty, with both a har­mo­nious visu­al dimen­sion and a spir­i­tu­al one, and the ques­tion of whether it belongs to the nat­ur­al world or the arti­fi­cial one.

Walk­ing out of the Under­world towards the oppo­site side of Earth, Charon and Gelas­to find them­selves in a flow­ery field sur­round­ed by a rur­al land­scape. Charon is cap­ti­vat­ed by the smell and the views, which fill him with joy and aston­ish­ment. This idyl­lic scene is imme­di­ate­ly brought to an end by Gelas­to, who invites Charon to con­tin­ue their jour­ney in order to admire the human achieve­ments in the city. Gelas­to promis­es to find a place as won­der­ful as the flow­ery field: the theatre. 

Through this scene, Alber­ti opens up a crit­i­cal ques­tion: what is the rela­tion­ship between Nature and Archi­tec­ture? Is there a dif­fer­ence between the Beau­ty of Nature and the Architecture’s one? The answer is pro­vid­ed in the ensu­ing the­atre scene and will be ful­ly devel­oped with­in De Re Aedificatoria.

Whilst walk­ing towards the city, Charon asks Gelas­to about the ori­gin of this nat­ur­al beau­ty. Gelas­to offers him a philo­soph­i­cal expla­na­tion tak­en direct­ly from Aris­to­tle. Gelas­to explains the For­mal Cause, which is what gives mat­ter its form, and the Final Cause, which gives a thing its pur­pose. Through the For­mal and Final Cause, Nature reach­es the most har­mo­nious result, with­out contradiction. 

Charon is unsat­is­fied with this expla­na­tion, which does not seem to cap­ture the deep beau­ty of Nature, but rather con­fines it with the­o­ry. As they final­ly reach the the­atre, Charon’s judg­ment is final: 

Nature’s beau­ty is unique and all-sur­pass­ing. How­ev­er, Alber­ti enables the read­er to dis­cov­er a more nuanced view in the rest of the book. Two episodes involv­ing Juno and Jupiter are par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant. In one episode, Juno asks Jupiter to fur­ther adorn her house with lux­u­ri­ous orna­ments. This seem­ing­ly triv­ial event is, in fact, high­ly sig­nif­i­cant. This is where Alber­ti starts to divide good archi­tec­ture from bad archi­tec­ture, Aed­i­f­i­can­di libido as defined by Alber­to G. Cas­sani8. This is the oppo­site of civic archi­tec­ture, which gen­uine­ly pur­sues the pub­lic good, as described with­in De Re Aed­i­fi­ca­to­ria. In this sense, Archi­tec­ture can reach an approx­i­ma­tion of nat­ur­al beau­ty, offer­ing an opti­mistic per­spec­tive for human beings and their social structure.

In the sec­ond episode Jupiter, who rep­re­sents polit­i­cal pow­er and is a metaphor for Nico­lo V, is shown as utter­ly obsessed with the idea of design­ing a new world that could strength­en his pow­er over human beings. For this rea­son, he seeks advice from oth­er gods and philoso­phers but real­izes that archi­tects would actu­al­ly be of far more use to him. This final scene opens up the con­vic­tion that Archi­tec­ture can be more valu­able than philo­soph­i­cal thought in the ambi­tion to build a dif­fer­ent kind of soci­ety. The civic aim of Archi­tec­ture is drawn. The con­ti­nu­ity between De re Aed­i­fi­ca­to­ria and Momus is now ful­ly under­stand­able, despite the dif­fer­ent content.

Up to this point, Alberti’s writ­ings have pro­vid­ed an idea of Nature, con­sid­er­ing both aspects, more or less empha­sised depend­ing on the aim of var­i­ous argu­ments of the trea­tis­es: exter­nal Nature, seen in its phys­i­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal mod­el, and inner or imma­nent Nature as the essence of liv­ing beings. Both can lead to oppo­site cul­tur­al approach­es and phys­i­cal results since the inter­ac­tion between these two pro­duces human cul­ture and arti­facts, affect­ing the qual­i­ty of a civic community. 

In this sense, it is very mean­ing­ful the sen­tence includ­ed with­in the Pref­ace of De re Aedificatoria: 

Regard­ing this para­graph, Man­fre­do Tafu­ri, in Venice and Renais­sance9, sug­gests a com­par­i­son between this para­graph and a sim­i­lar state­ment by Daniele Bar­baro10, to under­line the sub­tle dif­fer­ence between them. 

On the one hand, D. Bar­baro sim­i­lar­ly rec­og­nizes that uni­ver­sal har­mo­ny belongs to Nature for Arts. How­ev­er, he also starts to con­sid­er it as a sig­nif­i­cant obsta­cle, assert­ing the impor­tance of human actions over it. On the oth­er hand, Alberti’s descrip­tion of the human artifact’s impact on Nature shows the pow­er used to mod­i­fy ground into inhab­it­ed ter­ri­to­ries. Cut­ting cliffs is a very strong image in this sense, with their bor­ders, inner shapes, their orog­ra­phy, and their geo­graph­i­cal lines mod­eled direct­ly by new machines and by an extra­or­di­nary trans­for­ma­tive capac­i­ty. As explained above, this human activ­i­ty should be not the cause of divi­sions and explo­ration, but rather of civ­il part­ner­ship, wealth, and pros­per­i­ty, in con­sid­er­a­tion of Nature, not against it. 

As a con­se­quence, despite his con­cerns, Alber­ti pro­vides here a cul­tur­al hori­zon where Archi­tec­ture and the city can become the cure for society’s ills and the device to build a har­mo­nious soci­ety, based on the same har­mo­nious struc­ture of Nature and its trans­la­tion into a strong the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal approach and in-depth research.

How­ev­er, to bet­ter under­stand how Alber­ti assigns archi­tec­ture to the civic role, the Sev­enth, Eighth, and Ninth books of De Re Aed­i­fi­ca­to­ria are essen­tial. They are cen­tered on the orna­ments on the sacred build­ings, both pub­lic and pri­vate. The Sev­enth book begins with this statement:

Here, Alber­ti asserts the impor­tance that the urban struc­ture is based on open spaces and pub­lic build­ings, and a sort of hier­ar­chy between them: func­tion, impor­tance, and con­ve­nience are the prin­ci­ples on which to build this organ­ism and its com­mu­ni­ty as a body or as a nat­ur­al environment.

This approach can be con­sid­ered usu­al and coher­ent with the char­ac­ter of the book. 

How­ev­er, recall­ing Alberti’s intel­lec­tu­al aim, this approach shows the cor­re­spon­dence between these arti­facts and the urban essence, defined by char­ac­ters, orna­ments, shapes, mate­ri­als, their loca­tions, func­tions and in rela­tion to their pub­lic or pri­vate role with­in the city. These ele­ments and the sym­bol­ic loca­tion of the build­ing rep­re­sent here the rel­e­vance of the archi­tec­tur­al rela­tion­ships at any scale. The prop­er mean­ing and the use of Archi­tec­ture and its Beau­ty depend on it. 

It is in book Eight that, as sug­gest­ed by Cas­par Pear­son in Human­ism and the urban world: Leon Bat­tista Alber­ti and the Renais­sance city, Alber­ti devel­ops fur­ther this top­ic. Its con­tent is made up of a descrip­tion of Alber­ti walk­ing through the coun­try­side toward the urban land­scape. The move­ment itself is an inter­est­ing nar­ra­tive strat­e­gy that empha­sizes the struc­ture of the urban space and focus­es more on rela­tion­ships than archi­tec­tur­al objects. His jour­ney starts from a view of the coun­try­side, with its roads and hous­es, and the vil­lage is drawn fol­low­ing the nat­ur­al shape of the terrain. 

Alberti’s eyes are able to cap­ture its beau­ty and har­mo­ny that aris­es not just from a sys­tem of num­bers and pro­por­tion, but from the pleas­ant­ness of the land­scape with the city seen in the distance. 

Per­haps the deci­sion to start his walk from here could be inter­pret­ed as a ref­er­ence to Nature as the main mod­el of Beau­ty and the pri­ma­ry archi­tec­tur­al source. How­ev­er, unlike in Theoge­nius and Momus, the con­flict­ual dialec­tic between the coun­try­side and the city is now dis­solved. Through the move­ment of his walk, Alber­ti brings togeth­er those two land­scapes with­out giv­ing them any pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive attributes. 

This absence is coher­ent with a descrip­tion that attempts to con­tain few emo­tions or empath­ic thoughts. Alberti’s judg­ment is lit­tle affect­ed by the envi­ron­men­tal atmos­phere or by an empir­i­cal expe­ri­ence. His ideas are formed through the ratio­nal process and are sup­port­ed by his his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge. This cre­ates a text that is strong­ly char­ac­ter­ized by objec­tiv­i­ty and sci­en­tif­ic rea­son­ing, and which aims to high­light all the main prin­ci­ples that should char­ac­ter­ize a har­mo­nious civic space.

The descrip­tion is inter­wo­ven with dif­fer­ent tex­tu­al con­tent: his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences to val­i­date Alberti’s state­ments; the clas­si­fi­ca­tions of all urban ele­ments, e.g. roads, squares; accu­rate descrip­tions of math­e­mat­i­cal pro­por­tions. The result is that the read­er does not focus on the author and his move­ment through the city, but is able to con­cen­trate on the prin­ci­ples described. 

Alber­ti con­tin­ues on his path, going through the grave­yard, still out­side the city, explain­ing their mean­ings, up to the city lim­its where he begins to ana­lyze the role of the city gates and the dif­fer­ent kinds of road. From this point on, the nat­ur­al side of the city is left behind. 

His entrance into the city is the chance to explain the impor­tance to have three cat­e­gories of roads: the ones with a spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter and shapes by rea­son of their uses and con­nec­tions to their sacred places or pub­lic build­ings, and those called com­mon roads. 

Mov­ing through the descrip­tion of the­atres, amphithe­aters, and places for the comi­tia, he sug­gests the right shapes, and the prop­er orna­ments. These qual­i­ties, like the mor­pho­log­i­cal ones, also have an impor­tant role with­in the urban body.

More­over, he describes the impor­tance of con­nect­ing pub­lic build­ings with open spaces for plea­sure, such as groves and pools. They give dig­ni­ty to the city. The grove is shown in terms of its sym­bol­ic mean­ing. It rep­re­sents the har­mo­nious trans­for­ma­tion of the ter­ri­to­ry and is a place where, close to oth­er pub­lic build­ings, every­day civic life takes place. 

The same sym­bol­ic empha­sis is giv­en to the library. Placed in the cen­ter, this build­ing replaces the medieval role of the church. It is the core of the new human­is­tic cul­ture, where books are col­lect­ed along with objects: math­e­mat­i­cal instru­ments, maps and stat­ues of ancient poets. 

The image of the math­e­mat­i­cal instru­ments with the poets’ stat­ues in the library rep­re­sents the final image of a jour­ney through Alberti’s thought. The Renais­sance city should be gov­erned by the con­ver­gence of ratio­nal thought and tools (such as those already found with­in De Stat­ua), but also poet­ry and oth­er valu­able arts, in order to build a peace­ful community. 

The Ninth book, which is cen­tered on the orna­ments of pri­vate build­ings, con­tains a full chap­ter ded­i­cat­ed to the prin­ci­ple of Concin­ni­tas. Alber­ti strong­ly claims that any artis­tic process in Archi­tec­ture should be based on Nature and this prin­ci­ple belonged to it: 

In this par­tic­u­lar sen­tence, Alber­ti shows a deep rev­er­ence for Nature as the ori­gin of Beau­ty. He remarks on the dif­fi­cul­ty in cap­tur­ing this imma­te­r­i­al qual­i­ty. The Concin­ni­tas is described as the main prin­ci­ple, that pro­duces a har­mon­ic com­po­si­tion. This is not just an aes­thet­ic qual­i­ty, but also pro­vides dig­ni­ty, author­i­ty, and charm. 

In this sense, Beau­ty does not rep­re­sent just a final result of his the­o­ry of aes­thet­ics. As explained at the beg­ging of this essay, his the­o­ry does not exist with­out an eth­i­cal aim that should involve a sin­gle life and society.

Inher­it­ing the Greek clas­si­cal approach towards Nature, espe­cial­ly the one described with­in Timaeus, it is based on the geo­met­ri­cal fig­ures and num­ber. How­ev­er, Nature is also the essence of life, the cause, a liv­ing organ­ism. This estab­lish­es a deep con­nec­tion between life and har­mo­ny: with­out har­mo­ny there is no life and no human beings and con­se­quent­ly Polis, look­ing at its phys­i­cal and social aspects. 

For this rea­son, Beau­ty, described as a result of Concin­ni­tas, has the poten­tial to rep­re­sent the com­mon fea­ture of the two inter­pre­ta­tions of Nature and their mutu­al forms of expression. 

Look­ing at Archi­tec­ture and Arts as the main ori­gin of a har­mon­ic world, Alber­ti is able to hold the clas­si­cal approach—rediscovered intro­duc­ing the idea of Gaia11—but to open it towards a Beau­ty that is the result of human transformation.

Conclusion

Look­ing at var­i­ous con­tem­po­rary philoso­phers and thinkers who deal with eco­log­i­cal issues, they agree that moder­ni­ty has sep­a­rat­ed the nat­ur­al realm from the cul­tur­al one, deny­ing the onto­log­i­cal auton­o­my of those objects that are the prod­ucts of this blend­ing. This approach, per­pe­trat­ing up to this cen­tu­ry, has deeply affect­ed most of the human con­texts, polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, etc., char­ac­ter­ized by lit­tle aware­ness and care about their effects on Nature and human beings them­selves. In recent decades, thanks to eco­log­i­cal move­ments and many the­o­ret­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions such as those of Bruno Latour, it has been demon­strat­ed that this sep­a­ra­tion has been mis­lead­ing. For this rea­son, more than ever, Latour12 asserts an urgent need to define Nature in a dif­fer­ent way, since many ​“nat­ur­al” objects belong to this blend­ing and no longer to one of the two worlds. All these insights arose from the inter­na­tion­al issues relat­ed to cli­mate change and they seek to iden­ti­fy the onto­log­i­cal ori­gin of this anthro­pocen­tric approach, in order to try to mod­i­fy our cul­tur­al per­spec­tive. Although Alberti’s thought belongs to a dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal peri­od, this does not mean that it is not a valid lega­cy from which we can still learn. In fact, Alberti’s idea of Nature that is not twofold or con­tra­dic­to­ry, as demon­strat­ed above, appears to be an attempt to main­tain the two cat­e­gories Nature and Cul­ture, look­ing for bal­ance between human trans­for­ma­tive action, which implies selec­tion and sep­a­ra­tion of ele­ments, and con­ser­va­tion. What Philippe Desco­la now sug­gests, name­ly mov­ing beyond these cat­e­gories, was part of Alberti’s inves­ti­ga­tions. This is evi­dent from his works and his statements.

More­over, by ele­vat­ing Archi­tec­ture and the city as the place of dig­ni­ty and charm and under­lin­ing its civic role, Alber­ti assigns a key role to our dis­ci­pline, propos­ing fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples and new tools. If there are short­com­ings in con­tem­po­rary the­o­ry, these could be addressed through con­nec­tions with one of the most trans­for­ma­tive human actions: Architecture. 

In this civic role archi­tec­ture should pro­vide a spe­cif­ic the­o­ret­i­cal approach. Gra­ham Har­man recalls the con­cept of imma­te­ri­al­i­ty13, in order to bridge the mod­ern mis­ap­pre­hen­sion of sep­a­rat­ed realms. For him, Art and Archi­tec­ture are cru­cial to demon­strate the new notion of Nature and draw­ing a new trajectory.

Man­fre­do Tafu­ri14 con­firms this key role for Alber­ti, explain­ing that, from the Renais­sance, the archi­tec­tur­al object has been los­ing its auton­o­my and its imma­te­r­i­al side. For this rea­son, Leon Bat­tista Alber­ti is deserv­ing of greater in-depth research. His approach to the con­cept of Beau­ty and his relat­ed think­ing would par­tic­u­lar­ly repay fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion into its rel­e­vance to address­ing con­tem­po­rary chal­lenges and the new notion of Nature.