ABSTRACT
The text “De Re Aedifi catoria”, written by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450, can be considered as the inauguration of the modern conception of architecture. This conception understands architecture as a mental and spiritual creation, thus refl ecting the new cultural ideal of Renaissance life as a unifi ed synthesis of thought and praxis and the relevant social demand for an enlarged role of the individual into the civic government of the independent city states of fi fteenth-century Italy.3 In the Introduction of the work, Alberti defi nes the modern ideal type of the architect in direct relation to the above transformations of the Renaissance world view.
