On Painting
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - no tears. Page Condition: Yellowed. Markings: Previous owner. Usual shelf-wear.
Written in the 1430s by the Renaissance polymath Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting stands as the first modern treatise on the theory of painting, a foundational text that transformed how Western art was conceived, taught, and practised. Alberti presents the mathematical and philosophical principles underpinning pictorial representation, most famously codifying the rules of linear perspective and instructing painters on the art of *historia* — the dramatic, multi-figured composition that would define Renaissance ambition for centuries. Translated from the Italian and introduced by John R. Spencer, this edition makes Alberti's revolutionary ideas accessible to the modern reader without sacrificing scholarly rigour. Alberti's prose moves with the authority of a man equally at home in architecture, mathematics, and humanist philosophy, and his arguments illuminate the profound intellectual ambition of the early Italian Renaissance. On Painting remains indispensable to anyone seeking to understand the conceptual architecture behind the masterworks of Masaccio, Donatello, and Botticelli — artists who were, in many cases, Alberti's contemporaries and friends. To read it is to stand at the very threshold where art became a science of vision.
Author: Leon Battista Alberti
Format: Hardback
Genre: History of arts
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - no tears. Page Condition: Yellowed. Markings: Previous owner. Usual shelf-wear.
Written in the 1430s by the Renaissance polymath Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting stands as the first modern treatise on the theory of painting, a foundational text that transformed how Western art was conceived, taught, and practised. Alberti presents the mathematical and philosophical principles underpinning pictorial representation, most famously codifying the rules of linear perspective and instructing painters on the art of *historia* — the dramatic, multi-figured composition that would define Renaissance ambition for centuries. Translated from the Italian and introduced by John R. Spencer, this edition makes Alberti's revolutionary ideas accessible to the modern reader without sacrificing scholarly rigour. Alberti's prose moves with the authority of a man equally at home in architecture, mathematics, and humanist philosophy, and his arguments illuminate the profound intellectual ambition of the early Italian Renaissance. On Painting remains indispensable to anyone seeking to understand the conceptual architecture behind the masterworks of Masaccio, Donatello, and Botticelli — artists who were, in many cases, Alberti's contemporaries and friends. To read it is to stand at the very threshold where art became a science of vision.