ALBERTI, LEONE BATTISTA (1404-1472), Italian painter, poet, philosopher, musician and architect, was born in Venice on Feb. 18, 1404. He was so skilled in Latin verse that a comedy he wrote in his twentieth year, entitled Philodoxius, deceived the younger Aldus, who edited and published it as the genuine work of Lepidus. In music he was reputed one of the first organists of the age. At Rome he was employed by Pope Nicholas V. in the restoration of the papal palace and of the foundation of Acqua Vergine, and in the ornamentation of the magnificent fountain of Trevi. At Mantua he designed the church of Sant' Andrea, at Rimini the Church of San Francesco, which is generally esteemed his finest work, and in Florence the principal facade of the church of Santa Maria Novella, as well as the palace now known as the Palazzo Strozzi. His most important treatise is that on architecture, De Re Aedificatoria, which was translated int.() Italian, French, Spanish and English.
See Passerini, Gli Alberti di Firenze (1869-7o) ; Mancini, Vita di Alberti . (Firenze, 1882) ; V. Hoffmann, Studien zu Leon Battista Alberti's zehn Biichern: De Re Aedificatoria (Frankenberg, 1883).