ABSTRACT
In a celebrated passage, Cristoforo Landino compared Leon Battista Allberti to a chameleon for his adaptable versatility; and Alberti himself employed animal symbolism in his Apologues and Dinner Pieces, even refashioning his identity by adding the name Leo to his Christian name Battista. In Florence, Alberti was stimulated by innovations in the visual arts, and soon he was experimenting with perspective and writing about painting. With the exception of the more ambitious De familia, De re aedificatoria, and Momus, he wrote single opuscula which as pieces d'occasion enjoyed only a limited circulation. In a famous passage of the Profugia ab erumna, Alberti celebrates the humanist project as an intellectual mosaic that assembles fragments of learning into a new and harmonious composition. Luca Boschetto's Leon Battista Alberti e Firenze sheds considerable light on both Alberti's life and writings, supplementing the classic biography by Girolamo Mancini with material discovered in the records of the Mercanzia in the Archivio di Stato in Florence.
