Rome

Maria Novella (1470); the Tempio Malatestiano (1450) in Rimini; commissioned by Lodovico Gonzaga, the churches of San Sebastiano (1460) and Sant’Andrea (1470) in Mantua. But in Rome itself, he did nothing except restoration. His literary masterpiece was the ten books of De re aedificatoria, the first comprehensive treatment of Renaissance architecture ever published, and the first treatise written on classical architecture since antiquity. Its effect on architects—at least on those who had Latin, since Alberti did not write it in vernacular Italian—was as wide and fundamental as Vitruvius’ had been. Indeed, it has a serious claim to be the most influential text on architecture ever written.

Although he did not build in Rome, Alberti had great influence there, and his medium for it was the pope, Nicholas V (1397–1455). Born Tommaso Parentucelli, this new pope, who ascended the papal throne in 1447, four short years after Alberti had settled in Rome as a member of the court of Pope Eugenius IV, was a humanist like Alberti, and had been his friend since their university days in Bologna. Both men in earlier years had served the Florentine grandee Palla Strozzi as a tutor. Vasari affirmed that Nicholas had “a great, resolute spirit, and knew so much that he was able to guide and direct his artists as much as they did him.”

Just how this translated into practice is not certain. Without doubt, Nicholas V and Alberti talked often and long about architecture and town planning—so long and so often that the pope became the natural person to whom Alberti would dedicate and present De re aedificatoria. “By God!” Alberti wrote at one point. “I cannot but rebel sometimes when I see monuments, which even the wild barbarians spared for their beauty and splendor, or even time itself, that tenacious destroyer, would willingly let stand forever, falling into ruin because of the neglect (I might have said the avarice) of certain men.” And to mitigate this constant erosion of Rome’s historical fabric, he began to collect all the knowable facts about the city’s monuments and to present them in a way that made preservation possible, if not easy. His friend the pope was all in favor of that work of memory.

Unlike many of his predecessors—all of whom were of course literate, but some not much more than that— Nicholas V was a ravenous bibliophile. “He searched for Latin and Greek books in all places where they might be found, never regarding the price,” wrote Vespasiano da Bisticci (1421–98), who would have known, being the principal bookseller of Florence.

He collected many of the best scribes and employed them. He brought together a number of learned men and set them to produce new books, and also to translate others not in the libraries, rewarding them liberally.… Since the time of Ptolemy there had never been collected such a store of books.

Nicholas’s book-collecting enthusiasm formed the basis of the Vatican Library, and cost a fortune. Thus he became “the ornament and the light of literature and of learned men, and if after him there had appeared another Pope following in his footsteps, letters would have achieved a position worthy of them.” This did not happen, because later popes did not entirely share Nicholas’s bibliomania. But even his library building was quite modest compared with his architectural enterprises. Vespasiano da Bisticci remembered how Nicholas “used to say that he would like to do two things, if ever he had the money: form a library and build, and he did both during his pontificate.”

The formation of the library was quite gradual. In the mid-fifteenth century, it consisted of only 340 volumes, two in Greek. Modern scholars point out that Nicholas V was the first pope to give the formation of the papal library a high priority, but by 1455 its collection amounted to no more than 1,160 books; there were others in Italy the same size or bigger. The honor of being the true founder of the Vatican Library as an institution, therefore, goes to a later pope, Sixtus IV, who was lucky enough to have the scholar Bartolomeo Platina as his librarian (1475–81). Later expansions, particularly that of Leo X in the sixteenth century, would far surpass that. Yet Nicholas certainly had the vision of a library for the Vatican, “for the common convenience of the learned,” and nobody could accuse him of stinginess. He even carried a bag with hundreds of florins in it, which he would give away by the handful to people he thought deserving.

Leon Battista Alberti he thought particularly deserving. Alberti stood out for two reasons.

First because, in addition to his other writings, he composed a Descriptio Urbis Romae, a Description of the City of Rome, which covered the main buildings of antiquity and the principal churches built during the Christian Era, along with the city walls and gateways, the course of the Tiber, and other matters. This was a huge step up from what had been the only guidebook to the antiquities of Rome, the legend-infested Mirabilia, or Marvels, of the Eternal City, a text infested with hearsay and extreme inaccuracies. Alberti’s guide became a much-needed prelude to the Jubilee year of 1450 which Nicholas had just announced. “There was not the least remain of any ancient structure,“ Alberti would write with pardonable pride, “that had any merit in it, but what I went and examined, to see if anything was to be learned from it. Thus I was continually searching, considering, measuring, and making draughts of everything I could hear of, until such time as I had made myself perfect master of every contrivance or invention that had been used in those ancient remains.” It is probably no exaggeration to say that Alberti ended up knowing more about ancient Roman building than most ancient Romans had.

The second reason lay in the pope’s own archaeological interests. In addition to all his other talents, Alberti had the novel distinction of being the world’s first underwater archaeologist. The object of his search was an ancient Roman galley from the time of Trajan, which 1,300 years before had sunk, presumably during a naumachia, a mock naval battle, to the muddy floor of Lake Nemi. Its location was known because it kept fouling fishermen’s nets. But nobody had figured out a way to raise it, and without underwater goggles divers could not see more than a vague bulk looming in dark water. Commissioned to do so by Cardinal Prospero Colonna, Alberti brought it up with grappling hooks, cables, floating barrels, and winches. Only the prow came clear of the water before the hull broke in half and sank again, and Alberti was able to observe—the first account of ancient Roman naval construction—that it was built of pine and cypress “in an excellent state of preservation” and covered with tar-soaked linen, which was then sheathed in lead secured by bronze nails.

Although this feat must have caused a good deal of buzz and flutter in court circles, what most cemented Alberti’s position as Nicholas V’s adviser on building was his large and ever-growing knowledge of architecture, its theory, practice, and history. In addition, he had no illusions about whom he was designing and, if possible, building for. “Do everything possible,” he exhorts the reader,

to obtain commissions only from the most important people, who are generous and true lovers of the arts. For your work loses its value when done for persons of low social rank. Can’t you see the advantages to be had in the furthering of your reputation if you have the support of the most influential people?

Moreover, “the safety, authority, and decorum of the state depend to a great extent on the work of the architect.” With the patronage and encouragement of Nicholas V, Alberti became the successor to Brunelleschi, with the difference that he was also the first architect of the Renaissance papacy. (Brunelleschi, despite his great influence on other architects, did not design for popes.) Certainly, though Alberti believed in the supremacy of Roman norms and forms, he also believed strongly in individual taste and would never have considered imposing a strict, formulaic canon of beauty. A building might well have the proportions of a human being, but what kind of human?

Some admire a woman for being extremely slender and fine shaped; the young gentlemen in Terence preferred a girl that was plump and fleshy; you perhaps are for a medium between these two extremes, and would neither have her so thin as to seem wasted with sickness, nor so strong and robust as if she were a Ploughman in disguise, and were fit for boxing: in short, you would like her such a beauty as might be formed by taking for the first what