By 1434, Alberti was in Florence in employ of Pope Eugenius IV, who would also facilitate the return from exile of Cosimo de’ Medici. The art of Florence would ensure Alberti’s rhetorical high notes in De pictura. Alberti’s popularity lies in his invitation to art, not in its execution. Art theory has never perpetuated art process; organic continuum precedes intellectual reflection. The genesis of De pictura, our first modern book on painting, derives from the personal passion of Leon Battista Alberti in the humanist classroom and attendance before the visual majesty of Padua, Bologna, northern Europe, and Rome – witnessed by the acute eye of an illegitimate son, born in exile.