ABSTRACT
Leon Battista Alberti, humanist and architect, was born in Genoa, the illegitimate son of Lorenzo Alberti, a Florentine banker whose family had been exiled from Florence as a result of the Ciompi revolt of 1378. In 1428, the exile of the Alberti family from Florence was revoked; and in 1432 Battista visited his ancestral city, where he was named prior of the rural parish of San Martino a Gangalandi. Meeting with a cool reception by older Florentine humanists, Alberti composed the Latin essay De commodis litterarum atque incommodis, in which he decries the low social status which attends the pursuit of learning. Despite the Florentine origins of his family, Alberti was raised in the north of Italy, and found it difficult to write in idiomatic Tuscan prose. Following the linguistic suggestions of Tuscan friends, Alberti revised his Books on the Family, creating a versatile Italian prose that ranges from colloquial banter to formal disquisition.
