Alberti never mentions Florence in De pictura. This is intentional as the tract not so much ignores as merely suggests previous periods of art, and Alberti’s refusal to specify those interludes, such as Romanesque, Gothic, or medieval, reflects the need for a humanist audience to have all precepts couched in the domain of antiquity. His cryptic indication of sources consequently demands forensic scrutiny of his visual paradigm before Florence. The text itself invites this. In the face of no hard evidence or documentation, Alberti’s claim in De pictura to be an ostensible painter begs the query as to where or with whom he began his study of draftsmanship, either in the studio or in practice. Although he had left Padua for Bologna by 1420, conjecture suggests that while in Padua he may have seen and even studied the art of genius before and contemporary to his age.

This chapter paints the political and intellectual backdrop of Padua in the 1300s, which sets the stage for Alberti’s education. While Rolandino, Lovato, and Mussato were intellectual giants of a commune, Petrarch, Conversino, and Vergerio were literary giants at a court – that of Francesco Il Vecchio da Carrara, a patron of classical medals, art, and humanist educators and antiquarians. Accordingly, five factors made Padua a center of early humanism: independent university faculty, accession of classical rhetoric, Petrarch and his library, Carrara’s support for educators and antiquarians, and the city’s absorption by Venice, allowing unfettered education to gift Alberti a literary and visual universe.