1404-1472
Mathematician, Writer, Architect

Rough Beginnings. Leon Battista Alberti was an Italian scholar, architect, and author, one of those people who might easily be called a "Renaissance Man." Born 14 February 1404, he was the illegitimate son of a Florentine banker, but, like many young men in Renaissance Italy whose fathers were wealthy, the circumstances of his birth did not keep him from gaining an excellent education. He studied Latin as a young boy, began studying literature from a private teacher at the age of eleven, and at fourteen or fifteen went to the University of Bologna to study law. Shortly afterward his father died, and he was apparently cheated out of his inheritance by his cousins, though this situation also did little to affect his rise in status. He began writing Latin plays and dialogues and met many prominent humanists and writers, who were impressed by...