Leon Battista Alberti Italian Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) is often compared to Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) in that he embodied so many of the virtues of the Renaissance Man. He was a poet, scholar, architect, mathematician, engineer, cartographer, and theorist who wrote books on most of those disciplines. In 1432 he began the Della famiglia (On the Family), a book in dialogue form that would offer the wisdom of ancient philosophers to instruct his contemporary reader in the ways of daily life, including advice on education, friendship, citizenship, and family relations. To ensure the widest possible audience, Alberti broke with the tradition of writing in Latin and published his treatise in Tuscan, a dialect of Italian. To Alberti, moral behavior arose out of virtuous action, not merely good thoughts. The following excerpt from On the Family outlines the proper behavior of a wife.

After my wife had...