Review by Choice Review
Leon Battista Alberti ranks as one of the most important (and arguably the first) art theorists of the Italian Renaissance. Every serious student of Renaissance art reads Alberti's De Pictura (On Painting). Alberti had many interconnected interests, with perhaps no one of them dominant; he particularly held mathematics in high regard and gained expertise thereof. This book makes four of Alberti's mathematical treatises, including one of doubtful attribution, available for the first time to English-language readers; that alone makes the volume an essential acquisition. The editors felt tempted to render Ex ludis rerum mathematicarum, title of the longest treatise (and the only one printed also in the original language), as "Cool Things You Can Do with Mathematics" (such as constructing an instrument for measuring the speed of a ship using the wind, the world's first anemometer). Elementi di pittura (Elements of Painting) overlaps some with On Painting, but takes an even more Euclidean approach to perspective. Texts on ciphers and quadrature round out the volume. Detailed commentaries spell out the plain sense of Alberti's works, which otherwise, even in translation, present certain difficulties for modern readers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Academic and general readers, all levels. D. V. Feldman University of New Hampshire
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
