Publication of De re aedificatoria

De re aedificatoria, composed by the Florentine humanist Leon Battista Alberti and presented to Pope Nicholas V in 1452, was the first major work of architectural theory written since antiquity, and when it was printed in 1485 it became the first printed book on architecture, appearing a year before the first printed edition of Vitruvius's De architectura. Organised into ten books covering materials, construction, public and private works, ornament and the restoration of buildings, Alberti's treatise self-consciously modelled itself on Vitruvius while adopting a critical, humanist stance rather than simple imitation, drawing on Plato, Aristotle and direct observation of ancient Roman ruins. Alberti articulated a theory of beauty grounded in mathematical proportion and harmony, recommending centrally planned geometric forms derived from the circle and square for sacred buildings, with ratios meant to bind plan and elevation into unified compositions. The work established architecture as a liberal art grounded in theory and civic purpose rather than mere craft, and remained the standard theoretical reference for European architecture for roughly three centuries, from the sixteenth through the eighteenth, shaping the design and thinking of Renaissance architects from Palladio onward.