Leon Battista Alberti,  (b. Feb. 14, 1404, Genoa—d. April 25, 1472, Rome), Italian humanist, architect, and principal initiator of Renaissance art theory. In his personality, works, and breadth of learning, he is considered the prototype of the Renaissance “universal man.”  The society and class into which Alberti was born endowed him with the intellectual and moral tendencies he was to articulate and develop over a lifetime. He belonged to one of the wealthy merchant-banker families of Florence. At the time of his birth, the Alberti were in exile, expelled from Florence ...