From the back cover:
Leon Battista Alberti (1401-72) was an outstanding representative of the Italian Renaissance and played a leading role in the development of its artistic, scientific, and humanistic culture. Joan Gadol's study describes the full range of Alberti's interests and examines the originality and soundness of his work in those three cultural domains.
Alberti's artistic achievements, which are enough to establish his central position in the history of the Renaissance, are matched by the historical importance of his humanistic and scientific works. His artistic ideas, like Leonardo's, were intimetely bound to scientific ones. The study of his thought thus provides a key to understanding the close relation between art and science in the Renaissance; and because Alberti (unlike Leonardo) was also a humanist, his writings and his career exhibit the relations he established between the artistic-scientific ideas of his age and its moral philosophy.
The author presents all the aspects of Alberti's work as art theorist, humanist, architect, cartographer, cryptographer, and mathematician. She is concerned with understanding the coherence of his thought, and traces the ideas that led him from one set of problems to another.
"This book claims to be, and is, the first comprehensive study of Alberti to appear in English. As such it is extremely welcome, and will be useful to all students of the Italian Renaissance." -Cecil Grayson, Renaissance Quarterly
"The book ... is a model of perception and clarity. Even the most intricate philosophical digressions, which can be treated only with the subtle language of the specialist, are made fully intelligible by the author's graceful and stimulating style." -Carlo Pedretti, Italian Quarterly

Contents:
page IX List of Illustrations
XIII Preface
3  Introduction
21 1 The Painter's Perspective
22 Vision: The Optical Theory of Natural Perspective
32 Depiction before Alberti
37 The New Visual Geometry
44 Depiction after Alberti
55 2. The Classical Perspective
56 Proportion in Painting
70 "Rational Seeing" and "Renaissance"
81 The Form of the Individual
93 3. Art, the Mirror of Nature
100 Renaissance Art Theory
108 The Theory of Renaissance Architecture: Numerus, Finitio, and Collocatio
117 The Practice of Renaissance Architecture
128 Nature and Genius
143 4. The Rational Cosmos
143 Art and Cosmology, Medieval and Modern
157 The Measure of the Earth
195 The Measure of the Heavens
200 The Scientific Mode of Thought
213 5. Rational Man
213 The Humanistic Mode of Thought: Letters and Virtue
231 Epilogue: The Measure of the Man
245 Bibliography
259 Index