Treatise De Statua by Leon Battista Alberti: Translation, Commentary and Notes

Abstract

The present research aims to provide an annotated and commented academic translation of theRenaissance treatise De Statua by the Italian humanist and polymath Leon Battista Alberti.Originally written in Latin, De Statua provides a practical guide to understand the principles ofstatuary, particularly those related to anthropometry, according to the sculptural standards of the Italian Renaissance, which in turn drew upon models from the Greco-Roman Classical Antiquity. The division of this work will be as follows: I) to translate the treatise De Statuafrom Latin to Portuguese; II) to conduct an extensive bibliographic survey of scholars who have studied this treatise and other related works by Alberti, as well as relatively contemporaryauthors who have written on similar topics, such as Lorenzo Ghiberti and Pomponius Gauricus,including an examination of the context in which the treatise was produced, with the aim ofmaking explanatory notes and write a propaedeutic commentary; III) to analyze the argumentsand divisions of the text aiming the identification of the presence of rhetorical precepts, intertextuality, and elements both of Alberti's own style and intrinsic to the "treatise" genre; and IV) to build a lexicon of technical and Albertian terms contained within the treatise to assist readers not only of "De Statua" but also of other works by the author.