Leon Battista Alberti, De Pictura (On Painting, 1435)—This treatise on the art of painting was written by one of Florence's most distinguished fifteenth-century humanists. Alberti revives classical ideas about proportion and beauty and he outlines a method by which painters can make their pictures appear to have depth.

Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography (1562)—This swashbuckling and adventurous memoir was not published until 1728. The author was an accomplished, but admittedly second-rank sculptor and painter (that is, when compared to the great figures of the sixteenth century). Sometimes he indulges in a taste for braggadocio. At other points, though, he is remarkably humble. Like Leonardo da Vinci, he continually denies that he is a learned man, but his use of motifs and episodes drawn from earlier literary traditions show that he had at least received a passably good education. Cellini, moreover, winds a good...