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Palazzo Strozzi, 11 March - 23 July 2006

A supreme architect and town planner, a prodigious scholar and an extremely acute art theorist, but also a mathematician, painter, archaeologist, physicist, chemist and musician, Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) was the man that embodied the universal ideals of Humanism before Leonardo. He possessed an intellect capable of penetrating the most diverse fields, of formulating original syntheses of reason and beauty, of defining the rules of a new aesthetics and of shaping the sensibility of an epoch.

The major exhibition set up in the monumental premises of Palazzo Strozzi pays tribute to one of the protagonists of Renaissance culture through the display of over 160 works connected with Leon Battista Alberti and his aesthetic teachings, as reflected in the masterpieces of Donatello, Ghiberti, Andrea del Castagno, lo Scheggia, Filippo Lippi, Neri di Bicci, Rossellino, Filarete, Verrocchio, Botticelli, Fra' Carnevale, among others also represented at the exhibition.

The works of art on display, as well as the exemplars of the minor arts (fabrics, models, jewellery, etc.), medals, manuscripts, letters and printed books, and in addition to the multimedia supports, are all parts of a unified itinerary designed to show how profoundly the presence of Alberti's thought permeated the aesthetic imagination of the age of Humanism and influenced the figurative production of the time.

The exhibition also continues outside Palazzo Strozzi, in the form of an Alberti itinerary: Palazzo Rucellai, the façade of the Church of Santa Maria Novella, the Shrine of the Holy Sepulchre in San Pancrazio, the Shrine of the Basilica of Santissima Annunziata.

The exhibition, under the Patronage of the President of the Republic, is promoted and produced by the Ente Cassa di Risparmio on the occasion of the VI centenary of the birth of the artist. Firenze Mostre handles the realisation and organisation with the precious support of the Special Commission for the Florentine Polo Museale and the other territorial Commissions, of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, of the Florence City Council and of the National Committee for the Alberti Celebrations.

The curators are Cristina Acidini (Director of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure of Florence) and Gabriele Morolli (professor of History of Architecture at the University of Florence).
The catalogue is published by Mandragora/Maschietto Editore.