1404-1472

Italian architect and mathematician whose Della Pittura (1435), which contains the first general account of the laws of perspective, initiated the classical Renaissance style in art. Known as the Florentine Vitruvius, his De re aedificatoria (promulgated 1452, published 1485) became the bible of Renaissance architecture, incorporating as it did advances in engineering and aesthetic theory. Alberti also produced a treatise on geography that set forth the rules for surveying and mapping and wrote the first book on cryptography.