2. Humanist philosopher, writer, Renaissance architect and artistic theorist, Leon Battista Alberti is considered by many scholars to be the quintessential Renaissance "universal man" of learning.
3. Leon Battista Alberti wrote the first book on Italian grammar and a groundbreaking work on cryptography. He is credited with inventing the cypher wheel.
4. Alberti never received a formal architectural education. His architectural ideas were the product of his own studies and research.
9. A master of Latin and Italian, Alberti also rewrote in Latin traditional lives of saints and martyrs.
10. After taking holy orders, he was deemed to hold the priorate of San Martino a Gangalandi at Lastra a Signa
11. In 1448 he was appointed rector of the parish of San Lorenzo in Mugello.
12. Alberti served also as a papal inspector of monuments (1447-55), and advised Pope Nicholas V, a former fellow student from Bologna, on the ambitious building projects in the city of Rome.
14. In 1431 and early 1432 he accompanied Cardinal Albergati on a tour of northern Europe.
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17. The facade of Santa Maria Novella (1458-71) is considered his greatest achievement
18. The only buildings Alberti designed entirely him, were S. Sebastiano (1460)
19. Palazzo Rucellai is a fifteenth-century palace in the Piazza de' Rucellai, Florence, Italy, designed by Leon Battista Alberti between 1446 and 1451.
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21. TempioMalatestiano, the façade of Santa Maria Novella in Florence is considered to be a landmark in the formation of Renaissance architecture
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25. Detail of a neoclassical pediment made of wood with a window, University of Virginia Colonnade, Charlottesville, VA, USA
26. Frontal view of the Renaissance pediment with scrolls, Santa Maria Nouvella, Florence, Italy
49. But the 15th century was marked by the more than a dispersal of influence; it was based on contradiction. It served as a link between two concepts of the world.