Humanism and the Urban World: Leon Battista Alberti and the Renaissance City

2. The Divided City

2 In the first chapters of Book V of De re aedificatoria, Alberti engages most thoroughly with the city as a concept in its own right. However, the discussion is not framed as an examination of the city per se, nor as a comparison between different kinds of cities, although that is in effect what it becomes. Rather, in full accordance with the structural logic of the treatise, Alberti begins Book V, titled “On the Works of Individuals,” by discussing “what is necessary or desirable in the case of individuals.” Working from the premise that different people require different kinds of buildings, “let us begin,” he says, “with the more exalted.” These are the people “entrusted with supreme power and judgment,” the rulers, who may be divided into two kinds: those who rule alone and those who rule as part of a group. “The one who alone rules over the others,” Alberti says, “is he who should have the greatest honor. Let us therefore consider what is appropriate in his particular case.” (Dignissimum nimirum oportet esse hunc, qui caeteris praesit solus; quae igitur istius unius gratias fiant, consideremus.)1 The precise meaning of this sentence is not immediately clear.Whether Alberti is proposing that the lone ruler is the kind of ruler who is the most worthy of honor, in and of himself—in other words, the best kind—or whether he is simply saying that lone rulers will, by their nature, require the most honors, including the most dignified architectural treatment, is T H E D I V I D E D C I T Y THE DIVIDED CITY 57 not apparent.The distinction is a fine one but, as we shall see, important. In cities where power is concentrated in the hands of just one person, Alberti asserts, this individual may be of two kinds, either one who “governs reverently and piously over willing subjects, motivated, that is, less by his own gain than by the safety and comfort of his citizens,” or one “who would wish to control the political situation so that he could remain in power even against the will of his subjects.” The latter is a tyrant, and, Alberti stresses, “each building and even the city itself should differ when under the rule of those called tyrants, as opposed to others who take up their command and care for it like a magisterial office conferred on them by their fellows.” As a legitimate ruler, a king will have no fear of his subjects, whereas the tyrant’s “own people may be just as hostile as outsiders.” Thus, where Alberti concentrated previously on fending off the threat of destruction from nature or a foreign army, when discussing the tyrant’s city, he must consider how it may best be fortified “against one’s fellow citizens.”2 The Tyrant’s City Alberti proceeds to outline exactly how the cities of the tyrant and the legitimate ruler diverge.3 At the outset, the tyrant appears in a negative light as one who seeks power only for himself and is indifferent to the sufferings of his people, while the king rules purely in their interests, as though his power were that of a magisterial office. The subject was a live one at the time that Alberti was writing, but his remarks must be viewed in the context of a long-standing political discourse in which tyranny is condemned and other forms of government, usually monarchy, are approved.4 This discourse, as Hans Baron has shown, had been reinvigorated and adapted in the circle of the Florentine chancellor Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406) at the beginning of the fifteenth century. An ideological defense of “liberty,” as opposed to tyranny, formed an important element of Florentine propaganda during the war with Milan and continued to be developed by humanist chancellors, in particular Leonardo Bruni.5 Alberti was connected to this circle, and we might expect his text to reflect elements of Bruni’s thinking and to proceed with a full-scale denunciation of tyranny.6 However, as the passage unfurls, the clear conceptual difference between the two rulers is not maintained linguistically or attitudinally. 58 HUMANISM AND THE URBAN WORLD Throughout most of his description of the tyrant’s city, Alberti refers to the authority figure not as a tyrant but as a princeps. Yet, toward the end, he seems to return to his original definitions, remarking, “Such are...